Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

With the coming of the autumn, Anne’s spirits soared, for she discovered that at last she was pregnant. The King was overjoyed. He was sure that if he would but show the people a male heir, everything that had gone to the producing of it might be forgotten.

Anne, eager to be brought to bed of a healthy child, gave up her life of gaiety and spent a good deal of time reading and thinking of the past. She could not look back with much pride on the two years which had seen her Queen. It seemed to her that much of her time had been spent in worthless machinations and sordid subterfuge. The affair of Madge Shelton stood out from those years, filling her with shame. She herself was now with child again; should she be delivered of a son, her dearest wish would be granted; she would then ask nothing more of life.

She was thoughtfully sitting over her tapestry with her ladies, asking questions about the poor of London. She said: “Would it not be better if, instead of stitching this fine tapestry, we made shirts and suchlike garments for the poor?”

It was strange to see her who had been known to occupy herself at great length with the planning of her own gowns, to see her who had given orders how should be cut and made yards of black satin and gold arras, now stitching contentedly at garments for the poor. She had changed, and the change had a good deal to do with the terrible fear which had beset her and which had been removed, first by the King’s returning affection for her, and then by her pregnancy.

Hugh Latimer had been largely instrumental in her change of heart. She had been interested in the great reformer ever since she had heard of him, and when Stokesley, Bishop of London, had had him committed to the Tower, she used all her influence to get him released. The King, reluctant and yet unable in a fresh return of his passion to refuse what she asked, agreed on the release, and thus postponed Latimer’s martyrdom for twenty-five years. On his release, Anne had desired to hear him preach and forthwith did so, when, much to her astonishment, instead of receiving the gratitude she might have expected from the man, he delivered for her benefit a stormy lecture advising those who placed too much reliance on treasures upon Earth to turn from their folly and repent. Anne saw the man afterwards and characteristically asked him where he thought she had erred. He answered unflinchingly that she should by her morality and piety set an example to those under her command. Greatly impressed by his honesty—a virtue by which she set great store—she appointed him one of her chaplains and began to veer towards a more spiritual way of life. Always generous in the extreme, she delighted in looking into deserving cases about her, and helping those whom she considered would benefit by such help. She had always done this when cases were brought to her notice, but now she looked for them systematically.

Although less superstitious than the King, she was not entirely free from this weakness. As she stitched at garments for the poor, she asked herself if she were not doing this in return for a healthy boy. Was she placating the Powers above, as Henry did? Was she, she wondered, getting a little like him? She had her moments of fear. Was Henry capable of begetting a healthy boy? His body was diseased. What if this were the reason Katharine had failed, and she too, so far! Perhaps she was, in a way, placating Providence, making conditions.

She was worried about the Princess Mary. She was still afraid of the Princess and of Katharine. It had seemed to her that if these two were together they might plot something against her, and through her against Elizabeth. Chapuys she feared. She knew well there were many powerful nobles who deeply resented the break with Rome. They were all only waiting to rise up and destroy her. She must not allow her new favor with the King to blind her to this.

And as she stitched, she prayed for a son.

The King prayed too. He was pleased with the change in Anne. It was well to see her calmer, quieter; it was well to feel this peace stealing over him because at last their union was flavored with hope. He needed such hope; the people were being difficult once more. They were saying that it had not rained since More had died; they would always find a reason for a bad harvest, and the crops had failed once more. The Flanders trade was not good. In fact it looked as if the country was getting together a collection of grievances and irritations in order to make trouble.

The King needed distraction. It suddenly dawned on him that one of his wife’s attendants was—well, not so much an attractive girl as a different kind of girl. Perhaps he meant that she was quite different from Anne; she was so quiet, she moved about like a little mouse; she was very fair; she had a prim little mouth and quick, glancing eyes. She would never be leader of the revels, she would never shine, she would never outwit a man with her sharp tongue! She was as different from Anne as any woman could be. That was why he first noticed her.

If she caught his eyes upon her, she would drop hers quickly; a soft rose-pink blush would steal into her cheeks. She was very demure.

On one occasion he was sitting alone, thinking that it was a long time before his son could be born, and wondering if there was some holy relic the soothsayers could give him as protection against another girl child. He had some holy water, a tear which Christ had shed over Lazarus, and a vial of the sweat of St. Michael; all of which he had purchased at great cost during the sweating sickness. But in spite of these, Anne’s first child had been a girl, and he wondered whether he should buy something especially which might ensure the birth of a boy. As he considered this, the demure maid of honor came into the room and, seeing him, curtseyed in a frightened way and would have hurried off had he not detained her with a “Hi, there! What want you?”

“Her Grace, the Queen . . .” said the girl, so low that he could scarcely hear her.

“What of Her grace, the Queen?” He studied her from head to toe. Small where Anne was tall; slow of movement where Anne was quick; meek where Anne sparkled; slow of speech instead of bright; modest instead of coquettish; willing to listen humbly rather than disconcert a man with her wit.

“I had thought to find her . . .”

“Come hither!” said the King. “And are you very disturbed to come upon the King when you looked for the Queen?”

“Yes, Your Majesty . . . I mean no, Your Majesty. . . .”

“Well,” said Henry pleasantly, “make up your mind.”

She would not come too close. He did not force her, liking suddenly her demureness, since there were so many of them who were too ready.

She could think of nothing to say, which pleased him and made him remember that Anne was over-ready with her retorts.

“Sit there awhile and I will play. You may listen. Bring my lute to me.”

She brought it, cautiously. He tried to touch her fingers over the lute, but she was quick; she had leaped back as though he had tried to sting her. He was not angry. His thoughts were chiefly of his son, and therefore with Anne. But he liked the girl; he was, he told himself, always touched by modesty; he liked and respected it in the young people about his court.

He commanded her to sit; she did so, modestly letting her hands fall into her lap; her mild eyes watched him, and then seemed full of admiration.

When he had finished he saw that her eyes were filled with tears, so moved was she by his music, and he realized that he had not felt so gratified for a long time.

He asked her name. She told him it was Jane Seymour.

He dismissed her then. “You may go. We shall meet again. I like you, Jane!”

It was not a quarrel with Anne, just a slight irritation. A petty argument, and she, in her overpowering way, had proved herself right. Jane Seymour would never be one to prove herself right. She’s all woman, thought Henry. And that’s how a woman should be. Women are women, and men are men. When the one will dabble with that which is solely within the province of the other, it is a sad thing.

He sent for Jane Seymour. She should have the honor of hearing his new song before he allowed anyone else to hear it. She sat listening, her feet scarce reaching the floor; which made her seem helpless. She was very meek.

He made inquiries about her. She was the daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall in Wiltshire; he was by no means a powerful nobleman, but it was interesting to discover that there was a tiny root of royalty in his family tree, provided one dug deep enough to find it. Henry stored such knowledge. And as he played his lute, he thought about Jane; a quiet, mild bedfellow, he thought, pleasant enough, and white-skinned; unawakened and virginal. He grew sentimental; virtue had that effect on him. All women, he told himself, should be virtuous.

The court noticed his preoccupation with the maid of honor. Chapuys and the French ambassador laughed together. They were cynical. The King had been noted of late to extol virginity. “He refers to Jane Seymour!” said the French ambassador, to whom the Spanish ambassador replied that he greatly doubted Jane possessed that quality, having been some time at court. He added that the King might be pleased though that she did not, for then he could marry her on condition that she was a virgin, and when he needed a divorce he could then find many witnesses to the contrary.

But the King continued to view Jane through sentimental eyes. She had been primed by her father and her brothers, when dazzling possibilities had occurred to the minds of these very ambitious men who had the example of the Earl of Wiltshire and the young Lord Rochford before their eyes. They advised Jane: “Do this . . .” “On no account do that . . .” Jane herself was not without ambition. She had watched many a quarrel between the King and Queen, and she understood the King more than he would have thought from the demure eyes that met his with such seeming sincerity.

When he tried to kiss her, she was overcome with blushes; she ran away and hid herself, and the King, having become the champion of virtue, could not satisfy his conscience if he forced the girl to anything. His mind began to scheme with his conscience once again. What if this marriage with Anne had been wrong? What if God should show his disapproval over the child? The plans were not very well shaped as yet—they were misty shadows of thought, which allowed him to dally with Jane, while respecting her virtue.

He gave her a locket bearing his picture; she wore it on a chain round her throat, intending this to be a sign that were she not of such unbending virtue she would readily consider his advances, having the greatest admiration for his person. He wanted Jane; he could not have her; and this made her seem very desirable to him.

The story of Anne was to Jane a long object lesson: what to do before, what not to do after. But though Jane knew what she must do, she was not very intelligent, and she could not prevent a new haughtiness creeping into her manner, which Anne was quick to notice. She saw the locket which Jane was wearing, and asked mildly enough if she might see it.

Jane flushed guiltily, and put her hand over the locket; whereat Anne’s suspicions flared up. She took the locket, breaking its chain as she did so, and on snapping it open beheld the smiling face of the King crowned in a jeweled cap.

A year ago she would have raged against him; now she was silent and undecided. She saw in sly Jane Seymour, with her much-paraded virtue, a more deadly enemy than any other woman who had taken the King’s fancy.

She prayed urgently. A son! I must have a son!

At Kimbolton Castle, Katharine lay dying. She had lived wretchedly during her lingering illness, for money due to her was not paid. She was full of sorrow; not only had she been separated from her beloved daughter, but when she had asked that she might see the Princess before she died, even this request was denied her. She was deeply disturbed by the fate of her former confessor, Father Forrest, who though an old man had, through his allegiance to her, been cruelly treated at the hands of the King; he had been imprisoned and tortured in such a manner that she could not bear to contemplate; she longed to write and comfort him, but she feared that if a letter from her was intercepted, it might cause the old man’s execution, and though, in his case, death might be the happiest release from his misery, she could not bring it about. Abell, her other confessor, was treated with equal cruelty; it was unbearable that her friends should suffer thus.

Chapuys had got the King’s reluctant permission to visit her, and arrived on New Year’s Day. She was delighted to see one whom she knew to be her friend. She was very ill, and looked ten years older than her fifty years. He sat by her bed and she, while expressing genuine sorrow for all those who had suffered in her cause, said that she had never thought for one instant that she had been wrong in her struggle against the King.

To the man who had caused the chief miseries of her life she had no reproaches to offer. She was the daughter of a king and queen, and she believed in the divine right of royalty. The King would bastardize a princess, because he was bewitched; he would, she believed, emerge from that witchery and see the folly of his ways. It was her duty in the interests of royalty to uphold herself and her daughter—not for any personal reasons, but because they were Queen and Princess. Katharine was adamant now as ever, and would have suffered any torture rather than admit that her daughter was not the legitimate heir to the throne of England.

She talked with tears of Fisher, with regret of More; she talked of Abell and Forrest, mercifully knowing nothing of the more horrible deaths that awaited these two of her faithful adherents.

Chapuys, the cynic, thought, She is dying by his hand as surely as More and Fisher did. He thought of the years of misery this woman had endured, the mental torture that had been inflicted on her by her husband. Here was yet another victim of the murderer’s hand. What though the method was different!

Chapuys had no real comfort to give her. His master would not wish to be embroiled in a war with England for the sake of Katharine of Aragon and her daughter since he had his hands full elsewhere.

To comfort her though, he hinted at some action from outside on her behalf. She brightened. His visit did much to revive her; it was so rarely that the King allowed her to be visited by her friends.

After he left, another incident occurred which helped to lighten her grief in being denied the comfort of her daughter’s presence.

It was evening of a bitterly cold day, when through the castle there echoed the sound of loud knocking. Her maid came to tell her that it was a poor woman who, making a journey across country, had lost her way and begged to be allowed to spend the night at the castle for fear she and her attendant should freeze to death.

Katharine bade them bring in the poor souls and give them food.

She was dozing, when her bedroom door was opened and a woman came in. Katharine looked at the newcomer in astonishment for one moment, and then the tears began to flow from her eyes. She held out her arms, feeling that she was a girl again, riding the rough seas of the Bay of Biscay, thinking fearfully of the fate which awaited her in an unknown country where she was to marry a boy husband; she was young again, watching the land grow less blurred, as she sailed into Plymouth. With her there had been a band of beautiful Spanish girls, and there was one among them who, during the unhappy years which England had given her, had ever been her faithful friend. This girl had married Lord Willoughby; and they had been together until, by the King’s command, Katharine had been banished from the court and cut off from all those she loved. And here was Lady Willoughby coming by stealth, as a stranger lost in the snow, that she might be with Katharine during her last hours in England as she had been during her first.

This was wonderful; she was almost happy.

“If I could but have seen my little daughter . . .” she murmured.

But the coming of her friend had put her in high spirits, and she revived so much that she was well enough to sit up in her bed, though she was too far gone in sickness of body, which had grown out of sickness of mind, to make any real recovery. During the first week of January her condition grew worse. She had mass said in her room on the afternoon of the sixth, and then, ill as she was, asked for materials that she might write a last letter to the King. She did not blame him; she accepted her fate meekly; she only asked that he should be a good father to their daughter Mary, and that he should do right by her servants.

Henry was hilarious when he heard the news of Katharine’s death; there followed one moment of apprehension when in a blurred fashion he remembered her sad, pale face, heard her strong voice pleading for justice. He did then what he ever did when remorse touched him; he made the persecution of Katharine someone else’s burden, not his own; he assured himself that he had acted from the highest and most disinterested of motives.

“Praise be to God!” he cried. “We are delivered from all fear of war. The time has come for me to manage the French better than before, because in wondering whether I may now ally myself to the Emperor, they will do all I want.”

He would now show that he had never been married to Katharine. He dressed himself in yellow, having a white feather set in his cap, for why should a man go into mourning for one not his wife!

“Bring me my daughter!” he cried, and the nurses brought Elizabeth to him. Although little more than two years old, she was already a very bright and intelligent child who enjoyed being exhibited, and surveyed her great dazzling father with the utmost interest.

He called for all the musical instruments to play; the courtiers must dance. He went from one to the other, demanding they do homage to their little Princess. “For,” he exclaimed again and again, “we are now delivered from the evil threat of war!”

Anne rejoiced when she heard the news. It was a great relief. For the first time, she thought, I can feel myself to be really Queen; there is no shadowy Queen in the background to whom some could still look. I am Queen. There is no other Queen but me!

She was inordinately gay; she imitated the King’s action, and dressed in yellow.

She did not know that he had once discussed the question of divorcing her with his most trusted counsellors; she did not know that he had refrained from doing so because they said he might divorce her, but if he did, he would surely have to take back Katharine.

Now that Katharine was dead, and Anne felt more secure, she decided she could be less harsh to the Princess Mary, so she sent one of her ladies to the girl with a message. Would Mary come to court? Could they not be friends?

“Tell her,” said Anne, “that if she will be a good daughter to her father, she may come to court and count me her friend. Tell her she may walk beside me, and I shall not need her to hold my train.”

Mary, grief-stricken by the death of her mother, brokenhearted so that she cared not what became of her, sent back word that if being a good daughter to her father meant denying that for which martyrs’ blood had been shed, she could not accept Anne’s offer.

“The foolish girl!” said Anne. “What more can I do?”

Then she was angry, and at the root of her anger was the knowledge that she herself had helped to make this motherless girl’s unhappy lot harder than it need have been. She could not forget what she had heard of Katharine’s miserable death, and in her new and chastened mood she felt remorse as well as anger.

She tried again with Mary, but Mary was hard and stubborn, neither ready to forgive nor forget. Mary was fanatical; she would have all or nothing. She wanted recognition: Her mother to be recognized as the true Queen, Anne to be displaced, Elizabeth to be acknowledged a bastard. And on these terms only, would Mary come to court.

Anne shrugged impatient shoulders, really angry with the girl because she would not let her make amends. When my son is born, thought Anne, I shall be in such a strong position that she will do as I say. If I say she shall come to court, she shall come to court, and it will not be so easy for her to find favor with the King when she is forced to do that which she might have done more graciously.

The beginning of that year was disastrously eventful for Anne. The first disturbance was when Norfolk came hurrying into her chamber to tell that the King had taken such a toss from his horse that he feared he was killed. This upset Anne—not that the King, during their married life, had given her any reasons to love him—but in her condition she felt herself unable to cope adequately with the situation which must inevitably arise if he died. She had the interests of her daughter and the child as yet unborn to look to, and she was greatly disturbed. This however proved to be a minor accident; the King’s fall had done scarcely any harm, and he was too practiced a horseman to suffer much shock from such a fall.

After this escape, the King was in excellent spirits. He found Jane Seymour alone in one of the Queen’s apartments. People had a way of disappearing from Jane Seymour’s side when the King approached. Demure as she was, she had permitted certain liberties. He was somewhat enamored of the pretty, pale creature, and she was a pleasant diversion for a man who can scarcely wait to hear that his son is born.

“Come hither, Jane!” he said in the soft, slurred voice of a lover, made husky with good ale and wine. And she came to him most cautiously, until he, seizing her, pulled her on to his knee.

“Well, what did you think, Jane, when that fool Norfolk ran around telling the world I was done for, eh?”

Jane’s eyes filled with tears.

“There, there!” he said. “’Tis no matter for weeping. Here I am, hale and hearty as ever, except for a sore leg . . .”

He liked to talk of his leg; he spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

“Every physician in London has had a go at it, Jane! And to no avail. I’ve tried charms and potions . . . no avail . . . no avail.”

Jane was timidly sympathetic; he stroked her thighs caressingly.

He liked Jane; he could sit thus happily with her, feeling a mild pleasure in her, without that raging desire which must put a man in torment till it was slaked; it was just pleasant, stroking and patting and going so far and then drawing back.

The door opened, and Anne was watching them. All the fears which she had successfully pushed away came rushing back. She knew Jane Seymour . . . sly, waiting, watchful of her opportunities. Anne suddenly realized why they waited, why Henry could be content to wait. They were waiting to see whether she bore a son. If she did, then Jane Seymour would be the King’s mistress. If not . . .

Anne’s self-control broke. She began to storm and rage. She now said to the King all those things which had been in her mind and which, even in her most frank moments, she had never mentioned before. It was as though she dragged him away from that bright and pleasant picture he had made of himself, and held up her picture of him. She was laughing at his conscience, at his childish method of putting himself right. Did he not think she saw through that! Did he not think that the great men about him did not either!

She was maddened with rage and grief and terror, so that she knew not what she said.

Henry’s one idea was to calm her, for he must think of the son, whom she was so soon to bear.

“Be at peace, sweetheart,” he pleaded, “and all shall go well for thee.”

But Anne was not at peace. Jane Seymour ran and hid herself behind the hangings, covering her face with her hands and audibly murmuring: “Oh, what have I done!” while she rejoiced at what she had done.

For what could she have done to suit herself and her supporters more, since, after that sudden shock, prematurely Anne’s son was born dead!

Trembling, they brought the news to the King. He clenched his hands; his eyes seemed to sink into the flesh about them, while the veins stood out knotted on his forehead. In uncontrollable rage he strode into Anne’s room. He stood over her as she lay limp, exhausted and defeated. Words flowed from that cruel little mouth. She had done this! She had humiliated him! She had deceived him into thinking she would give him sons! She was a witch, a sorceress . . .

Enfeebled as she was by hours of agony, yet she answered with spirit: “There was none to blame but yourself. This is due to the distress of mind you caused me through your philanderings with that sly Seymour wench!”

Henry roared back wrathfully: “You shall have no more sons by me!” And then, cunning and pious: “I see well that God does not wish to give me male childen.”

But he did not really believe this, not seeing how he himself could possibly be at fault in this matter.

“When you are on your feet, I will speak to you,” he said coldly.

Then he went from the room, his thoughts with Jane Seymour. It might well be that this marriage was a mistake, he was thinking. By God, I was forced into it by sorcery! She was irresistible, with her long hair and her wicked little pointed face. It was beyond the power of man to say nay to her. Sorcery! This is why God does not permit me to have male children. Might it not be that I should make a new match?

Jane Seymour sat in her apartments at the palace, awaiting the King. These apartments which were splendid and hung with rich arras and cloth of gold, had a short while before belonged to Thomas Cromwell, but he had vacated them that Jane might use them, because adjoining those of the King they could most easily and secretly be reached by His Majesty.

Jane was rather frightened by the great happenings which had come about ever since that day when the King had glanced in her direction. Her brothers, Thomas and Edward, had planned ambitiously, and their plans, they told their sister, were all for her. Edward was clever, subtle and ambitious; Thomas was fascinating, dashing and also ambitious. Look what came to Anne Boleyn! said these two. Why not to Jane Seymour? True, Jane had not the obvious attractions of Anne Boleyn, but men were strange in their fancies, and was it Anne’s beauty and wit that had charmed the King as much as her reluctance? If Jane had not beauty and wit, she could be as reluctant as Anne, and in all probability with more effect, for shyness would seem more natural in Jane than it ever could be in Anne.

So Jane must bow to the wishes of her family. Chapuys and the imperialists were with Jane too, eager to support any who would bring disfavor on the partisans of Martin Luther.

So here was Jane, meek and mild, yet not being entirely without ambition, feeling that it would be somewhat pleasant to wear a crown, and that to discountenance the haughty Anne Boleyn would be most gratifying. She was therefore ready enough to step into her mistress’s shoes, yet a little frightened, for she could not but be aware that this role which was being forced upon her—even though she was not altogether reluctant to take it—was a very dangerous one. Anne was losing her place; Anne who had wit and beauty; Anne who had kept the King for five long years after she had become his mistress; and when she remembered this, Jane dared not think more than a month or two ahead. Her brothers had assured her that all she need do was obey their orders. She admired her brothers; they were clever, which Jane had never been; they were men, whereas Jane was just a weak woman. She was afraid of the King; when he put his face near hers and she smelled the wine on his breath, when she looked at the great face with its purple veins, when the little bloodshot eyes twinkled at her, she did not have to feign a desire to run. Jane, without pity, thought of the Queen who would have to be displaced if she were to sit on the throne; it was not that Jane was cruel or hard-hearted, but merely that she was without imagination. Children could move her a little; they were small and helpless like Jane herself, and she understood their doubts, their fear of their elders, their gropings for enlightenment. She had wept a little for the Princess Mary, for surely that child had suffered a very hard fate; if Jane were ever Queen, she would do her best to see that even little Elizabeth was treated fairly, for bastard though she was, she was at least a child, and a little child at that.

Jane’s thoughts went back to that important day when the King’s messenger had come to her with a letter and purse of gold from the King. Her brothers had been expecting some such approach from the King, and had primed her as to what she must do. Jane was ever obedient; her nature demanded that she should be; so she obeyed her brothers. She kissed the letter to show how greatly she esteemed the King’s person, how if he were but free to pay honorable courtship to her, she would so willingly have linked her fortune with his. The purse she refused.

“Kneel to His Grace the King,” said Jane, “beseeching him to consider that I am a gentlewoman of good and honorabIe family. I have no greater wealth than mine honor, and for a thousand deaths I would not sully it. If my lord the King desires to make me a present of money, I pray it shall be when God sends me a good offer of marriage.”

The King had evidently not been displeased with this response. Jane had made it tremblingly, doubting whether her brothers had not gone too far and might have displeased His Majesty. But no! Her brothers had been right; the King was enchanted by such modesty and virtue. He would have the world know that the virtue of the ladies of his court was their most admired possession in the eyes of their King. The Seymours were honored; they should have apartments in the palace near the King, for with Jane’s family and friends he was more at ease than with Anne and hers. He was never sure of Anne’s friends; they were too clever, too subtle. In future, give him good practical jokes; give him hearty humor that all could understand; he had done with mockery and smartness, and people who wrote and talked in a manner that he was not at all sure did not put him in the shade. No, he liked the company of the Seymours; they soothed him, and it was pleasant to contemplate a good and virtuous woman who appealed to him without arousing too insistent a passion.

He knew what the Seymours were after. Well, well, Anne could not have boys. A daughter from Katharine, a daughter from Anne! He wondered what he would get from Jane. With Anne he had scarcely thought of children at first, so greatly had he desired her, but he would not marry Jane on the chance that she might have a child; he would have to make sure that she was capable of doing so, before he committed himself again. This was a delicate situation for the Seymours, which while it was full of the most dazzling possibilities, was rampant with danger. Jane’s strength had been in her aloofness, and how could she remain aloof and at the same time prove to the King that she was capable of bearing his child? The Seymours had to act with extreme tact; they had to take a risk, and they took it boldly. Hence the apartments close to those of His Majesty; hence the secret visits of the King, when he found Edward Seymour and his wife discreetly absent, and Jane alone and not so demure, waiting to receive him.

His courtship of her was a sober matter when he compared it with his courtship of Anne Boleyn. There was something restful about Jane; he never forgot for a moment when he was with her that he was the King, and never did he lose sight of the real meaning of this love-making. If Jane was unlike Anne, she was also unlike the King; he looked at their reflections, side by side in the mirror; himself large and red, she small and white; he completely master of the situation, she shrinking, a little afraid. She did not shrink from his coarseness as Anne had often done; cleverly she feigned such innocence as not to understand it; if she made a false move, if she said anything to arouse his anger, she would be meekly apologetic. With Jane Seymour he was enjoying a period of domestic peace which he had not enjoyed since he had banished Katharine and taken Anne to live beside him. In the turbulent years he had longed for that peace which would be brought about by what he thought of as Anne’s sweet reasonableness; it had been a goal to which he, in his sentimental hours, had reached out with yearning hands, and never did he succeed in attaining it. Now here was Jane, offering it to him; he could lie back, close his eyes, enjoy it, say what he liked, and be sure of approbation.

The girl was a bit insipid though; he realized that, after the first few nights with her. She was too passive; neither eager nor repulsing him; just meek and submissive. All that a Queen should be to a King of course, but . . . Ah! he thought, I think of Anne. I gave too much of myself to that witch, for witch she is, with the devil’s own power over me, so that even when I lie with another I cannot forget her. There will be no peace for me, while Anne lives, for the power of a witch is far-reaching, and she can cast spells even when her victim is in a good woman’s arms.

Jane was not a little troubled by this most secret love affair between herself and the King; she was terrified of the Queen, whose rages could be awful; she had been maid of honor long enough to witness many a scene between their Majesties, and at these scenes the Queen had been known to outwit the King. The Queen was more physically attractive than any woman at court; it was impossible to be near her and not see the effect she could have on those about her. There were men who, conceiving passions for her ladies, would visit them, and on the coming of the Queen would be unable to take their eyes from her; she had but to throw a stray word in their direction, or a quick smile, and they were ready to do anything for her. She had that power. There might be those who said the King was tired of her; and so he was . . . at times. There might be those who would say that her only hope of holding the King was to give him a son; that was true in part, but not wholly. Jane had seen the many and conflicting moods that had come to the King as he watched this woman; anger and hatred had been there, strong enough to let in murder; but something else too, passionate hunger which Jane could not understand but vaguely feared. “What if through Your Majesty’s visits I should be with child?” she had asked. He had patted her thigh indulgently. “Then, my Jane, you would please me mightily; you would show yourself worthy to be my Queen.” “But how may I be your Queen when you have already a Queen?” His eyes glinted like tiny diamonds. “Let not thy head bother with matters too big for it, Jane!” A warning, that had been; do not meddle in state affairs, child. It is a dangerous thing for a woman to do.

All the same, Jane was uneasy. She would tell herself that the King was bewitched, the Queen had sorcery in her eyes; it was not necessary to be clever to see that. Those huge, black, flashing eyes had more witchery than was natural for a woman to have; and the Queen was careless of what she said, as though she had some hidden power to protect her; she could draw men to her with a speed and an ease that had magic in their roots. She would weave spells round the King who, having realized her wickedness and his folly in submitting to it, would now escape. She had brought evil into the court when she entered it. She had brought misery and great humiliation to the true Queen and her daughter Mary. Jane could weep to think of the child. And now her spells were less potent, for though she could weave them about men, she could bring no son to the King, since children were of heaven and Anne’s powers came from hell. This was how Jane saw it. When the King caressed her, she would close her eyes tightly and say to herself: “I must endure this, for in this way can I save our lord the King from a witch.” She prayed that her body might be fruitful, for she saw that thus could she fulfill her mission.

She thought continually of the Princess Mary. She had known her when she had been a maid to Katharine, before the coming of Anne Boleyn; she had ever deplored the King’s infatuation for Anne; she had secretly adhered to Katharine all through the dangerous years, and so had she won the approval of Chapuys and many of the nobles who condemned the break with Rome. Thus they had been pleased when the King’s fancy had lighted on her, and had sought to help and advise her.

She said to the King when he came to her: “I have been thinking of the Princess Mary.”

“What of her?” he asked indifferently.

“I but thought of the hardship of her life, and how sad it is that she should be banished from the court. I wondered if Your Majesty would most graciously allow her to be brought back; I fear she suffers deeply from the humiliation which has been heaped upon her.”

The King looked at Jane with narrowed eyes. He said with exasperation: “You are a fool! You ought to solicit the advancement of the children we shall have between us, and not others.”

When he left her Jane assured herself that her duty was to rescue the Supreme Head of the English Church from a wanton witch who would never release him in this life. And as Jane did not know how she could rescue him, except by bearing him a child, she knelt down by her bed and prayed that her union with the King might bring forth fruit.

The Queen was gay, recklessly so. Her eyes were enormous in her pale face; she was almost coquettish; she was lavish with the smiles she bestowed on those about her. The King was spending more and more time with the Seymours, and there was no doubt in Anne’s mind that Jane was his mistress; moreover she knew this to be no light affair; there was deep meaning behind it. Those two brothers of Jane’s were eager and apprehensive; they watched, they waited; indeed all the court was watching and waiting for something to happen. The loss of her boy, they whispered, had finished Anne. Cynical courtiers murmured together: “Is he trying out Jane? If the King is waiting to produce a child before divorcing Anne, he may wait a very long time!”

It would have been a humiliating position for anyone; for Anne it was agonizing. She thought, This happened to Katharine while we tried for the divorce; it happened to Wolsey when he awaited his downfall; this is how More and Fisher must have waited in their homes . . . waited for a doom they felt coming to them, but knew not from which direction it would come. She was not the sort to show her fear; if during the lonely nights she would awake startled, the sweat on her forehead, having dreamed some nightmare in which the doom was upon her; if she lay awake for hours staring into darkness, thinking of the King with Jane Seymour, wondering if he ever thought of her, she never showed this. After such nightmares, such nocturnal wondering, she would be gayer than ever. Her clothes were still the talk of the court; she would throw herself feverishly into the planning of a new gown; she could no longer sit silently stitching for the poor, though she did not forget them. She would gather round her the most brilliant of the young men and women. Just as there had been Katharine’s sober friends in the old days who had held aloof from that set over which she and the King ruled together, so now there was yet another set, and this time it was the Seymour party, but the King was of the Seymour party. Round Anne fluttered the poets and the wits, not seeming to care that they scorched their wings. Her revels were still the wittiest; the Seymours’ were heavy and clumsy in comparison, but the King could not be lured from them. Handsome Henry Norris, who was supposed to be in love with Madge Shelton, had eyes for none but the Queen; people smiled at this man who was supposed to be engaging himself to Madge but was forever postponing his marriage. “What good does that do poor Norris?” they asked. “Surely he cannot hope to marry the Queen!” Francis Weston and William Brereton, younger and more sophisticated, were equally enamored of her; Wyatt was faithful as ever. She encouraged their attentions, finding great solace in the love of these men, wounded when she discovered that the King preferred dull Jane Seymour. She was reckless; she accepted the homage of those who loved her; she would dance and laugh immoderately; she was wittier than ever, and the wildness of her looks gave her beauty a new strangeness that for some augmented it. It would seem that she wished to lure all to her side, that only when she was surrounded by those who admired her did she feel safe. She sought to build up a wall of friendship round her. She had with her, in addition to Madge Shelton, those two friends, Margaret Lee and her sister Mary Wyatt, in whom she placed the greatest trust. Her own sister Mary came to attend her, and it was good to contemplate the serene happiness of Mary who, happy in her love for Stafford whom she had married, was as comfortable to be near as a glowing fire in winter. Anne felt secure with these people. Even Mark Smeaton, whom she had raised to be one of her chief musicians, might show his passionate admiration of her, and go unreproved.

There were always those to watch her slyly. The black eyes of the Spanish ambassador would meet those of the King’s vicar-general, and the Spaniard would guess what thoughts went round and round in Cromwell’s ugly shaven head. Jane Rochford was now openly unsympathetic towards Anne, not caring if she did invite her husband’s disapproval.

As for George, he seemed to have caught his sister’s recklessness; he rarely warned Anne now; he was like a man who had been running from danger and, feeling suddenly there is no escape, turns to face it.

It was pleasant to sit with George and Mary, Margaret Lee, Mary and Thomas Wyatt, talking of childhood days before they had been scattered and lost touch with each other.

“Well I remember,” said Anne on one occasion, “how we all played together in Norfolk, and then again in Kent, how we all talked of our ambitions and what we would do.”

“Ambition,” laughed George, “is like the moon; it looks so close, so easy to grasp, but the nearer knowledge takes you to it, the more unattainable you realize it to be. Ambition is a pernicious thing!”

“You said you would be a great poet,” said Anne. “Wyatt too.”

“And he at least achieved his ambition,” said George.

“Much good did it do him!” said Wyatt, looking meaningly at Anne.

“We hoped for too much,” she said; “all of us except Margaret and my sister Mary and your sister Mary. They are the happiest ones.”

They could look at those three. Margaret who was happily married to Sir Henry Lee, Mary Wyatt who had no husband but a serene countenance, Mary Boleyn who had many lovers, not for gain but for pleasure. The ambition of these three was happiness; they had found it. For the other three it had been power, and in a measure they had realized it too. There they were—Wyatt whose joy was in his verses and yet, being never satisfied with them, they could not give him complete happiness; Anne who would be a queen and had achieved her ambition and now listened for some sign to herald in disaster, as she scanned people’s faces and tried to read behind their eyes; George who through the fortunes of his sisters had come to fame. Three of those children who had played together—the ordinary ones who were not clever or brilliant, or made for greatness—had succeeded; it was the clever ones who had asked for much—though in a measure they had found what they desired—to whom failure had come.

Anne said: “We chose the wrong things; they chose the right. . . .” And none answered her, for this was a matter which it was unwise to discuss.

Mary would talk to her comfortingly.

“The King . . . ah! How well I knew him! Almost as well as you do, Anne.” Mary would smile at the memory. “He is wayward; none dare stand between him and his desires, but an a woman pleases she need fear naught.”

Ah, but Mary had known him as a mistress; Anne knew him as a wife.

The winter of that year passed into spring. Anne danced and sang as though she had not a care in the world; she would wander through the park at Greenwich, would watch the barges on the river, would sit under the trees; sometimes she would romp with the dogs, laughing gaily at their antics, throwing herself about in a frenzy of enjoyment, but her heart was sad and heavy; she would weep sometimes and mingle her tears with her laughter; this was a dangerous mood, for in it she cared nothing for what she said or what she did, and so laid herself open to attack from all her enemies. She would call Smeaton to her and bid him play, play something gay, something to which she could dance, something to make her gay and joyous; play music that told of love and laughter, not of sorrow. And the musician’s great dark eyes watched her passionately, and his long tapering fingers played for her, soothing her.

She gave him a fine ring, for his talent, she said, was great, and those with talent should not go unrewarded. She thought, He may sell it and buy himself clothes, poor man; he has little reward for his labors. But she knew he would never sell the ring, since she had worn it on her finger; and she laughed and was pleased that though the King appeared to be indifferent to her, a poor musician was deep in hopeless love for her.

“Come!” she would cry suddenly. “Let us have a masque. Let us do a witty play. Thomas, you and George shall put your heads together; I would be amused. Mark, you shall play for the dancing; you shall play for my singing. Let us dance and be merry . . . I am tired of melancholy.”

Cromwell had retired from court life for several days, on the plea of sickness. Cromwell needed solitude; he had to work out his next moves in this game of politics most carefully. He was no inspired genius; everything that had come to him had been the result of unflagging labor, of cautiously putting one foot forward and waiting until it was securely in its rightful place before lifting the other. He was fully aware that now he faced one of the crises of his career. His master commanded, and he obeyed, though the command of course was not given in so many words. Henry was too conscience-ridden to mention his more vile thoughts, so it was the duty of a good servant to discover his master’s wishes though not a word be spoken between them. Murder is a dangerous business, and Cromwell must consider whilst carrying out the King’s wishes, not what was good for the King and the country, but what was good for Cromwell. Cromwell had a very good head on a pair of sturdy shoulders, and he did not intend that those should part company. The farther one climbed, the more steep the road, the easier it was to slip; one false step now, and Cromwell would go slipping down to the dark valley where waited the block and the executioner’s axe.

It had seemed to Emperor Charles that, on the death of Katharine, new friendship with Henry might be sought, and for this reason Chapuys came to Greenwich for a special audience with the King. But how could Henry become the ally of Charles, when Henry had broken so definitely with Rome, and Charles supported Rome? Rome, it seemed, stood between the Emperor and Henry. Cranmer trembled; he got as near blazing forth his anger as Cranmer could get; he preached a reckless sermon. Cromwell did not feel so deeply. Cranmer made up his mind which course he would take, and was loyal to that course; Cromwell was ready to examine any course; he would use any members of any sect if necessary; he would support them one day, burn them at the stake the next. Cromwell could see that there was some advantage to accrue from a new bond of friendship with the Emperor; therefore he was ready to explore this course of action. Cromwell was at this time very busily engaged in ransacking the monasteries, but he could see that if the Emperor and Henry should cease to be enemies, this could easily be held up for a time. He was prepared for anything. Anne was furious; naturally she would be. A possible reconciliation with the Emperor was a direct insult to her; she had not been over-cautious in her treatment of Cromwell, never liking nor trusting him. Until now Cromwell had been meek enough, but he did not believe that he need now treat the Queen with over-much humility. The King had hinted that Jane Seymour was with child, and Cromwell must think of this matter very seriously. What if this were so? What if there was need for Henry to marry the girl quickly in order to legitimize a possible heir to the throne? Cromwell would be expected to bring this about, and if Cromwell failed to do it in the time at his disposal, what then? It was not so long ago when the King had desired a divorce most urgently, and Cromwell’s late master had blundered. Cromwell was ready to profit by the Cardinal’s mistakes, for he was resolved that he should not be caught as Wolsey had been. Cromwell would be ready. It was easy to see—and this applied particularly if Jane Seymour was really pregnant—that he need fear nothing from the wrath of Queen Anne. This secret matter of the King’s was conducted rather differently from that other secret matter. This was a series of hints and innuendoes: the lady was so demure, so shy, that the King must respect her reserve. She must not suffer—nor the King through her—the pain and scandal of divorce. How did one rid oneself of a wife one no longer wants, if not by divorce?

Cromwell knew a great deal about the peculiar burden of the King’s—his conscience. Cromwell knew that it was capable of unexpected twists and turns; Cromwell knew that it must always be placated, and how comparatively easy it was to placate it; how one turned a subject to show the side which the conscience might like and approve; how one carefully covered that which was unpleasant. The conscience was obliging; it could be both blind and deaf when the need arose; therefore, he did not propose to lose much sleep over that accommodating creature.

Cromwell decided to favor alliance with Spain. The Emperor was a better ally than Francis; alliance with the French had never brought gain to England. Henry had been very difficult at the meeting—which had seemed to Cromwell and to most of the counsellors deplorable. It showed cunning Cromwell one thing—the King was still under the influence of Anne. In spite of Jane Seymour, he would listen to Anne; in spite of her failure to give him an heir, he still hankered after her. It was an alarming state of affairs; Cromwell knew his master well enough to realize that if something was not soon done, he would have Henry throwing aside Jane Seymour, buying fresh holy relics, reconciling himself to his black-browed witch, in one more effort to get himself a son. Were the Queen secure again, what would happen to Thomas Cromwell? What had happened to Thomas Wolsey! It was not so long ago that one could forget.

There must be alliance with Spain, for it meant the downfall of Anne; how disconcerting therefore, when the King must abuse the Emperor before Chapuys himself, must recall all he had done to delay the divorce, must announce here and now that not for a hundred alliances would he give way to Rome! He had made himself head of the Church, and head of the Church he would stay. If there was any humility to be shown, then Emperor Charles must show it. He even went so far as to tell Chapuys that he believed Francis had first claim on Burgundy and Milan.

This seemed to Cromwell sheer folly. The King was not acting with that shrewdness a statesman must always display. Henry was smarting under insults which he had received from Clement and Paul and Charles. He was not thinking of the good of England; he could only think: “They want my friendship—these people who have been against me, who have worked against me, who have humiliated me for years!”

Anne had said: “Ah! So you would be friends with your enemies as soon as they whistle for you, would you! Have you forgotten the insults of Clement? And why did he insult us? Would Clement have dared, had he not been supported? And by whom was he supported? By whom but this Charles who now comes and asks for your friendship, and in a manner that is most haughty! Oh, make friends, accept your humble role, remember not the insults to your kingship, to your Queen!”

He had ever been afraid of her tongue; it could find his weakness. Well he knew that she feared alliance with Spain more than anything, for it would mean her personal defeat; they had humiliated him and her, and as he had made her Queen, insults to her were insults to him. They had doubly insulted him!

This he remembered as he paced the floor with Chapuys, as he talked to Cromwell and Audley—that chancellor who had followed More—both of whom were urging him to sink his grievances and snatch a good thing while he could. But no! It was the Emperor who must come humbly to him. The egoist was wounded; he needed the sweet balm of deference from one he feared to be more mighty than himself, to lay upon his wounds.

Cromwell, for the first time in a long obsequious association, lost his temper; his voice cracked as he would explain; Cromwell and the King shouted at each other.

“Danger, Cromwell! Danger!” said a small voice inside the man, and he had to excuse himself and move away that he might regain control of his temper. He was trembling from head to foot at his folly; he was sick with fear and anger. How simple to abandon his quarrel with Rome! What need to continue it now Katharine was dead. Only the gratification of Henry’s personal feelings came into this. Anne and her supporters were at the bottom of it; they would keep alive the King’s anger. Could it be that Anne’s falling into disfavor really was but a temporary thing? Such thoughts were fraught with great terror for Thomas Cromwell. For the first time in his career with the King, he must act alone; thus he feigned sickness that he might shut himself away from the King, that he might make a plan, study its effect, its reverberations, from all sides before daring to put it into practice.

He emerged from his isolation one mild April day, and asked for permission to see the King.

The King scowled at him, never liking him, liking him less remembering the man’s behavior when he had last seen him. He, who had ever been meek and accommodating, daring to shout at him, to tell him he was wrong! Was this secretary—whom he had made his vicar-general—was humble Thomas Cromwell a spy of Chapuys!

“Sir,” said Thomas Cromwell, “I am perplexed.”

His Majesty grunted, still retaining his expression of distaste.

“I would have Your Majesty’s permission to exceed the powers I now enjoy.”

Henry regarded his servant with some shrewdness. Why not? he wondered. He knew his Cromwell—cunning as a fox, stealthy as a cat; since he had attained to great power, he had his spies everywhere; if one wanted to know anything, the simplest way was to ask Cromwell; with speed and efficiency he would bring the answer. He was the most feared man at court. A good servant, thought Henry, though a maddening one; and there’ll come a day, was the royal mental comment, when he’ll anger me so much by his uncouth manners and his sly, cunning ways, that I’ll have his head off his shoulders . . . and doubtless be sorry afterwards, for though he creeps and crawls and is most wondrous sly, I declare he knows what he is about.

Cromwell should have his special powers. Cromwell bowed low and retired well pleased.

A few nights later, he asked Mark Smeaton to come up to dinner at his house at Stepney.

When Mark Smeaton received an invitation to dine at the house of the King’s secretary, he was delighted. Here was great honor indeed. The Queen had shown him favor, and now here was Master Secretary Thomas Cromwell himself seeking his company!

It must be, thought Mark, my exceptional skill at music—though he had not known that Master Cromwell was fond of music. He knew very little of Cromwell; he had seen him now and then at the court, his cold eyes darting everywhere, and he had shivered a little for he had heard it said that none was too insignificant to be of interest to that man. He would know a good deal of most people, and usually of matters they would prefer to keep secret; and every little piece of information he gathered, he would store, cherishing it until he might lay it beside another bit of information, and so make up a true picture of what was happening at court.

Mark had never been so happy as he had this last year or so. He had begun life most humbly in his father’s cottage; he had watched his father at work on his bench, mending chairs and such things as people brought to him to be mended. He had heard music in his father’s saw and plane; he had heard music in his mother’s spinning wheel. Mark had been born with two great gifts—beauty and a love of music. He had a small pointed face with great luminous dark eyes, and hair that hung in curls about his face; his hands were delicate, his fingers tapering; his skin was white. He had danced gracefully from the time he was a small boy, though he had never been taught to dance. He was noticed, and taken to the house of a neighboring knight where he had taught the knight’s daughter to play various musical instruments; and when she had married, his benefactor had found him a place at court—a very humble place, it was true—so that Mark thought himself singularly blessed, which indeed he was, to have gained it. He had seen poor beggars wander past his father’s door with never a bite to eat, and their feet sore and bleeding; no such fate for clever Mark! An opening at court; what next?

What next, indeed! He had never known how beautiful a thing life could be until one day when the Queen had passed so close to him that he had seen her long silken lashes lying against her smooth skin, and had heard her sing in the most exquisite voice he had ever heard, very softly to herself. Then she had caught sight of him, noticed his beauty of face, would have him play to her. He had wondered how he had been able to play, so deep had been his emotion.

Not only was she his idol, she was his benefactress. He was in his teens, at that age when it is possible to worship from afar some bright object, and to be completely happy in such worship, to be amply rewarded by a smile; and the Queen was generous with her smiles, especially to those who pleased her—and who could please her more readily than those who played excellently the music she loved!

Sometimes she would send for him and have him play to her when she was sad; he had seen her eyes fill with tears, had seen her hastily wipe them. Then he had yearned to throw himself at her feet, to say: “Let Your Majesty command me to die for you, and gladly will I do it!”

But that was foolish, for what good could his death do her? There were rumors in the court, and thinking he knew the cause of her unhappiness, he longed to comfort her. He could do so by his music, and he played to the Queen as he had never played before in his life. So pleased was she that she gave him a ring with a ruby in it, a most valuable ring which never, never would he remove from his finger.

That was some weeks ago, and it seemed to him as he considered this invitation to dine at Stepney, that events were moving so fast that he could not guess to what they pointed.

There were many about the Queen who loved her and made no great effort to hide their love; playing the virginals close by, he had heard their conversation with her. There was Sir Henry Norris whose eyes never left her, and whom she baited continually, pretending to scold him because he was a careless lover—since he was supposed to be in love with her cousin, Madge Shelton, yet was ever at the Queen’s side. There were Brereton and Weston too, whom she scolded happily enough as though the scolding was not meant to be taken seriously. There was Wyatt with whom she exchanged quips; they laughed together, those two, and yet there was such sadness in their eyes when they looked on each other, that Mark could not but be aware of it. As for Mark himself, he was but humbly born, unfit to be the companion of such noble lords and their Queen, but he could not help his emotions nor could he hide them completely, and those lovely black eyes must see his feelings and regard him with more indulgence because of them.

Two days before Mark had received the invitation, Brereton did not come to the presence chamber. He heard the nobles’ speculating on what had happened to him. He had been seen in his barge—going whither? None could be sure.

“On some gay adventure, I’ll warrant.” said the Queen. “We shall have to exact a confession from gay William, when he again presents himself!” And she was piqued, or feigned to be so; Mark was not sure; he could never be sure of the Queen; when she laughed most gaily, he sensed she was most near tears.

She found him sitting in the window seat, his lute idle in his hands.

She said softly: “Mark, you look sad! Tell me why.”

He could not tell her that he had been thinking he was but a foolish boy, a boy whose father was a carpenter, a boy who had come far because of his skill in music, and he at the height of his triumph must be melancholy because he loved a queen.

He said that it was of no importance that he was sad, for how could the sadness of her humblest musician affect so great a lady!

She said then that she thought he might be sad because she may have spoken to him as an inferior person, and he would wish her to speak to him as though he were a nobleman.

He bowed low and, overcome with embarrassment, murmured: “No, no, Madam. A look sufficeth me.”

That was disturbing, because she was perhaps telling him that she knew of his ridiculous passion. She was clever; she was endowed with wit and subtlety; how was it possible to keep such a mighty secret from her!

The next day he took a barge to Stepney. Cromwell’s house stood back from the river, which lapped its garden. Smeaton scrambled out and ascended the privy steps to the garden. A few years ago he would have been overawed by the splendor of the house he saw before him, but now he was accustomed to Greenwich and Windsor and Hampton Court; he noted it was just a comfortable riverside house.

He went through the gates and across the courtyard. He knocked, and a servant opened the door. Would he enter? He was expected. He was led through the great hall to a small chamber and asked to sit. He did so, taking a chair near the window, through which he gazed at the sunshine sparkling on the river, thinking what a pleasant spot this was.

The door must have been opened some time before he realized it, so silently was it done. In the doorway stood Thomas Cromwell. His face was very pale; his eyes were brilliant, as though they burned with some excitement. Surely he could not be excited by the visit of a humble court musician! But he was. This was decidedly flattering. In the court there were many who feared this man; when he entered a room, Mark had noticed, words died on people’s lips; they would lightly change a dangerous subject. Why had the great Thomas Cromwell sent for Mark Smeaton?

Mark was aware of a hushed silence throughout the house. For the first time since he had received the invitation, he began to wonder if it was not as a friend that Cromwell had asked him. He felt the palms of his hands were wet with sweat; he was trembling so much that he was sure that if he were asked to play some musical instrument he would be unable to do so.

Cromwell advanced into the room. He said: “It was good of you to come so promptly and so punctually.”

“I would have you know, my lord,” said Mark humbly, “that I am by no means insensible of the honor . . .”

Cromwell waved his thick and heavy hands, as though to say “Enough of that!” He was a crude man; he had never cultivated court graces, nor did he care that some might criticize his manners. The Queen might dislike him, turning her face from him fastidiously; he cared not a jot. The King might shout at him, call him rogue and knave to his face; still Thomas Cromwell cared not. Words would never hurt him. All he cared was that he might keep his head safely in the place where it was most natural for it to be.

He walked silently and he gave the impression of creeping, for he was a heavy man. Once again Mark was aware of the silence all about him, and he felt a mad desire to leap through the window, run across the gardens to the privy stairs and take a barge down the river . . . no, not back to court where he could never be safe from this man’s cold gaze, but back to his father’s cottage, where he might listen to the gentle sawing of wood and his mother’s spinning wheel.

He would have risen, but Cromwell motioned him to be seated, and came and stood beside him.

“You have pleasant looking hands, Master Smeaton. Would they not be called musician’s hands?” Cromwell’s own hands were clammy as fish skin; he lifted one of Mark’s and affected to study it closely. “And what a pleasant ring! A most valuable ring; a ruby, is it not? You are a very fortunate young man to come by such a ring.”

Smeaton looked at the ring on his finger, and felt that his face had flushed to the stone’s color; there was something so piercing in the cold eyes; he liked not to see them so close. The big, clumsy fingers touched the stone.

“A gift, was it, Master Smeaton?”

Mark nodded.

“I should be pleased to hear from whom.”

Mark tried to conceal the truth. He could not bear those cold hands to touch the ring; he could not bear to say to this crude man, “It was a gift from the Queen.” He was silent therefore, and Cromwell’s fingers pressed into his wrist.

“You do not answer. Tell me, who gave you that most valuable ring?”

“It was . . . from one of my patrons . . . one who liked my playing.”

“Might I ask if it was a man . . . or a lady?”

Mark slipped his hands beneath the table.

“A man,” he lied.

His arms were gripped so tightly that he let out a shriek for Cromwell’s hands were strong, and Mark was fragile as a girl.

“You lie!” said Cromwell, and his voice was quiet and soft as silk.

“I . . . no, I swear . . . I . . .”

“Will you tell me who gave you the ring?”

Mark stood up. “Sir, I came here on an invitation to dine with you. I had no idea that it was to answer your questions.”

“You came here to dine,” said Cromwell expressionlessly. “Well, when you dine, boy, will depend on how readily you answer my questions.”

“I know not by what authority . . .” stammered the poor boy, almost in tears.

“On the authority of the King, you fool! Now will you answer my questions?”

Sweat trickled down Smeaton’s nose. He had never before come face to face with violence. When the beggars had passed his father’s door, when he had seen men in the pillory or hanging from a gibbet, he had looked the other way. He could not bear to look on any distressing sight. He was an artist; when he saw misery, he turned from it and tried to conjure up music in his head that he might disperse his unhappy thoughts. And now, looking at Cromwell, he realized that he was face to face with something from which it was not possible to turn.

“Who gave you the ring?” said Cromwell.

“I . . . I told you. . . .” Smeaton covered his face with his hands, for tears were starting to his eyes, and he could not bear to look longer into the cold and brutal face confronting him.

“Have done!” said Cromwell. “Now . . . ready?”

Mark uncovered his eyes and saw that he was no longer alone with Cromwell. On either side of him stood two big men dressed as servants; in the hands of one was a stick and a rope.

Cromwell nodded to these men. One seized Smeaton in a grip that paralyzed him. The other placed the rope about his head, making a loop in the rope through which was placed the stick.

“Tighten the rope as I say,” commanded Cromwell.

The boy’s eyes were staring in terror; they pleaded with Cromwell: Do not hurt me; I cannot bear it! I could not bear physical pain . . . I never could. . . .

The eyes of Cromwell surveyed his victim, amused, cynical. One of the thick fingers pulled at his doublet.

“Indeed it is a fine doublet . . . a very fine doublet for a humble musician to wear. Tell me, whence came this fine doublet?”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Tighten the rope,” said Cromwell. It cut into the pale skin of Mark’s forehead. He felt as though his head was about to burst.

“The doublet . . . whence did it come?”

“I . . . I do not understand. . . .”

“Tighter . . . tighter! I have not all the day to spend on such as he.”

Something was trickling down his face, something warm and thick. He could see it on his nose, just below his eyes.

“Who gave you the doublet? Tighten the rope, you fools!”

Mark screamed. His head was throbbing; black spots, like notes of music, danced before his eyes.

“Please . . . stop! I . . . will tell you . . . about the doublet . . . Her majesty . . .”

“Her Majesty!” said Cromwell, smiling suddenly.

“Loosen the rope. Bring him a little water. Her Majesty?” he prompted.

“Her Majesty thought I was ill-clad, and since I was to be her musician, she gave money for the doublet. . . .”

“The Queen gave you money. . . .” One large cold finger pointed to the ruby. “And the ring . . . ?”

“I . . .”

“The rope, you fools! Tighten it! You were too soft before. . . .”

“No!” screamed Mark. “You said . . . water . . .”

“Then who gave you the ring?”

“The Queen . . .”

“Give him water. The Queen then gave you the ruby ring.”

Mark drank; the room was swimming round and round; the ceiling dipped. He could see the river through the window—it looked faint and far away; he heard the sound of singing on a passing barge. Oh, were I but there! thought Mark.

“I would know why the Queen gave you the ruby.”

That was easy. “She was pleased with my playing . . . She is a most generous lady . . .”

“Over-generous with her favors, I’ll warrant!”

He felt sick. This was no way to speak of the Queen. He wanted to stand up, push aside that bland, smiling face, run out into the fresh air, run to the Queen.

“You were most friendly with the Queen?”

“She was most gracious . . .”

“Come, no evasions! You know full well my meaning. The Queen gave you money, clothes, and a ruby ring. Well, why not? She is young, and so are you. You are a handsome boy.”

“I understand not . . .”

“Subterfuge will not help you. You are here, on the King’s command, to answer questions. You are the Queen’s lover!”

The shock of those words set his head throbbing anew; he could still feel the tight pressure of the rope about his head, although in actual fact it was quite loose now; the torture had stopped for a while. He felt very ill; the blood was still trickling down his face from the cut which the rope had made. Oh, why had he accepted an invitation to dine with Thomas Cromwell! Now he knew what people meant when they talked with fear of Cromwell. Now he knew why they would suddenly stop talking when Cromwell appeared.

Cromwell rapped on the table with his knuckles.

“Tighten the rope.”

“No!” screamed Mark.

“Now. Speak the truth, or it will be worse for you. You are the Queen’s lover. You have committed adultery with the Queen. Answer! Answer yes!”

“No!” sobbed Mark.

He could not bear this. He was screaming with the pain; it seemed to him that his blood was pounding against the top of his head, threatening to burst it. It gushed from his nose. He alternately moaned and screamed.

Cromwell said: “You must tell the truth. You must admit this crime you and she have committed.”

“I have committed no crime! She . . . she . . . is a queen . . . No, no! Please . . . please . . . I cannot bear it . . . I cannot . . .”

One of the men was putting vinegar beneath his nose, and he realized that he had enjoyed a second or two of blessed unconsciousness.

Cromwell gripped his chin and jerked his head up violently, so that it seemed as if a hundred knives had been plunged into his head.

“This is nothing to what will follow, if you do not answer my questions. Admit that you have committed adultery with the Queen.”

“’Twould be but an untruth . . .”

Cromwell banged on the table; the noise was like hammer blows on his aching head.

“You committed adultery with the Queen . . . Tighten up . . . Tighter, you fools! Tighter . . .”

“No!” screamed Mark. And then the smell of vinegar, mingling with that of blood, told him he had lost consciousness again.

He sobbed: “I cannot . . . I cannot . . .”

“Listen,” snarled Cromwell, “you committed adultery with the Queen . . .” The great hand shot up and seized the stick from the hands of his servant. “There! There! You committed adultery with the Queen. You committed adultery with the Queen . . . Admit it! Admit it!”

Mark screamed. “Anything . . . anything . . . Please . . . I cannot . . . I cannot . . . endure . . . my head . . .”

“You admit it then?”

“I admit . . .”

“You committed adultery with the Queen . . .”

He was crying, and his tears mingled with the blood and sweat . . . and that hateful smell of vinegar would not let him sink into peace. He had longed to die for her, and he could not bear a little pain for her. A little pain! Oh, but it was such exquisite torture; his head was bursting, bleeding; he had never known there could be agony like this.

Cromwell said; “He admits adultery with the Queen. Take him away.”

They had to carry him, for when he stood up he could see nothing but a blur of paneled walls, and light from the window, and a medley of cruel faces. He could not stand; so they carried him to a dark chamber in which they left him, locked in. And as he sank to the floor, he lost consciousness once more.

He lay there, half fainting, not aware of the room nor even what had gone before. He knew nothing except that there was a pain that maddened him, and that it was in his head. In his mouth he tasted blood; the smell of vinegar clung to his clothes, devilishly not allowing him to rest in that dark world for which he longed.

He was semi-conscious, thinking he was in his father’s cottage, thinking he sat at the feet of the Queen, and that darkness for which he longed was her eyes, as black as night, as beautiful as forgetfulness.

But now someone was beating with a hammer on his head, and it was hurting him abominably. He awakened screaming, and knew suddenly that he was not in his father’s cottage, nor at the feet of the Queen; he was in a dark room in Thomas Cromwell’s house at Stepney, and he had been tortured . . . and what had he said? What had he said?

He had lied; he had lied about her for whom he would have died! Sobs shook his slender body. He would tell them . . . he would tell them he lied; he would explain. It hurt me so that I knew not what I said. She is a great, good lady. How could I have said that of her! How could I so demean her . . . and myself! But I could not bear the pain in my head; it was maddening. I could not endure it, Your Most Gracious Majesty! For that reason I lied.

He must pray for strength. He must do anything, but he must explain that he had lied. He could not let them believe . . .

He lay groaning in the dark, misery of body forgotten because he mourned so sincerely what he had done. Even though I assure them it is not so, I said it . . . I failed her.

He was almost glad when they came to him. That cruel man was with them.

Mark stammered: “I lied . . . It was not so. The pain was too much for me.”

“Can you stand?” asked Cromwell in a voice that was almost solicitous.

He could stand. He felt better. There was a terrible throbbing in his head, but the frightening giddiness had passed. He felt strengthened. No matter what they did to him, he would tell no more lies. He was ready to go to the scaffold for the Queen.

“This way,” said Cromwell.

The cool air fanned his burning face, setting his wounds to smart. He reeled, but there were those to support him. He was too dazed to wonder where he was going. They led him down the privy stairs to a barge.

He could feel the river breeze; he could smell the river, tar and sea salt mingling with blood and vinegar. He felt steady with purpose; he pictured himself going to the scaffold for her sake; but first though, he must make it clear that he had lied, that only such frightening, maddening torture could have made him lie about her.

The river was shot with darkness, for evening was advancing. The barge was being moored; he was prodded and told to get out. Above him loomed a dark, gray tower; he mounted the steps and went over the stone bridge. They were going to put him in the Tower! He was suddenly sick; the sight of the Tower had done that to him. What now? Why should they take him to the Tower? What had he done? He had accepted money, he had accepted a ring; they were gifts from a queen to one whose music had pleased her. He had committed no crime.

“This way,” said Cromwell. A door was unlocked; they passed through it. They were in a dark passage whose walls were slimy; and there was a noisome smell coming up from below the dismal spiral staircase which they were descending.

A man with a lantern appeared. Their shadows were grotesque on the walls.

“Come along,” said Cromwell, almost gently.

They were in one of the many passages which ran under the great fortress. The place was damp and slimy; little streams trickled across the earthen floor, and rats scuttled away at their approach.

“You are in the Tower of London, Smeaton.”

“That I have realized. For what reason have I been brought here?”

“You will know soon enough. Methought I would like to show you the place.”

“I would rather go back. I would have you know that when I said . . . when I said what I did . . . that I lied . . .”

Cromwell held up a thick finger.

“An interesting place, this Tower of London. I thought you would enjoy a tour of inspection before we continue with our cross-examination.”

“I . . . I understand not . . .”

“Listen! Ah! We are nearer the torture chambers. How that poor wretch groans! Doubtless ’tis the rack that stretches his body. These rogues! They should answer questions, and all would be well with them.”

Mark vomited suddenly. The smell of the place revolted him, his head was throbbing, he was in great pain, and he felt he could not breathe in this confined space.

“You will be better later,” said Cromwell. “This place has a decided effect on those who visit it for the first time . . . Here! Someone comes . . .”

He drew Mark to one side of the loathsome passage. Uncanny screams, like those of a madman, grew louder, and peering in the dim light, Mark saw that they issued from the bloody head of what appeared to be a man who was coming towards them; he walked between two strong men in the uniform of warders of the Tower, who both supported and restrained him. Mark gasped with horror; he could not take his eyes from that gory thing which should have been a head; blood dripped from it, splashing Mark’s clothes as the man reeled past, struggling in his agony to dash his head against the wall and so put an end to his misery.

Cromwell’s voice was silky in his ear.

“They have cut off his ears. Poor fool! I trow he thought it smart to repeat what he’d heard against the King’s Grace.”

Mark could not move; it seemed to him that his legs were rooted to this noisome spot; he put out a hand and touched the slimy wall.

“Come on!” said Cromwell, and pushed him.

They went on; Mark was dazed with what he had seen. I am dreaming this, he thought. This cannot be; there could never be such things as this!

The passages led past cells, and Cromwell would have the man shine his lantern into these, that Mark might see for himself what befell those who saw fit to displease the King. Mark looked; he saw men more dead than alive, their filthy rags heaving with the movement of vermin, their bones protruding through their skin. These men groaned and blinked, shutting their eyes from that feeble light, and their clanking chains seemed to groan with them. He saw what had been men, and were now mere bones in chains. He saw death, and smelled it. He saw the men cramped in the Little Ease, so paralyzed by this form of confinement that when Cromwell called to one of them to come out, the man, though his face lit up with a sudden hope of freedom, could not move.

The lantern was shone into the gloomy pits where rats swam and squeaked in a ferocious chorus as they fought one another over dying men. He saw men, bleeding and torn from the torture chambers; he heard their groans, saw their bleeding hands and feet, their mutilated fingers from which the nails had been pulled, their poor, shapeless, bleeding mouths from which their teeth had been brutally torn.

“These dungeons have grown lively during the reign of our most Christian King,” said Cromwell. “There will always be fools who know not when they are fortunate . . . Come, Master Smeaton, we are at our destination.”

They were in a dimly lighted chamber which seemed to Mark’s dazed eyes to be hung with grotesque shapes. He noticed first the table, for at this table sat a man, and set before him were writing materials. He smelled in this foul air the sudden odor of vinegar, and the immediate effect of this—so reminiscent of his pain—was to make him retch. In the center of this chamber was a heavy stone pillar from which was projected a long iron bar, and slung around this was a rope at the end of which was a hook. Mark stared at this with wonder, until Cromwell directed his gaze to that ponderous instrument of torture nicknamed the Scavenger’s Daughter; it was a simple construction, like a wide iron hoop, which by means of screws could be tightened about its victim’s body.

“Our Scavenger’s Daughter!” said Cromwell. “One would not care for that wench’s embrace. Very different, Smeaton, from the arms of her who is thought by many to be the fairest lady of the court!”

Mark stared at his tormentor, as a rabbit stares at a stoat. He was as if petrified, and while he longed to scream, to run to dash himself against the walls in an effort to kill himself—as that other poor wretch had done—he could do nothing but stand and stare at those instruments of torture which Cromwell pointed out to him.

“The gauntlets, Smeaton! A man will hang from these . . . Try them on? Very well. I was saying . . . they would be fixed on yonder hook which you see there, and a man would hang for days in such torture as you cannot . . . yet imagine. And all because he will not answer a few civil questions. The folly of men, Smeaton, is past all believing!”

Mark shuddered, and the sweat ran down his body.

“The thumbscrews, Smeaton. See, there is blood on them. The Spanish Collar . . . see these spikes! Not pleasant when pressed into the flesh. How would you like to be locked into such a collar and to stay there for days on end? But no, you would not be unwise, Smeaton. Methinks you are a cultured man; you are a musician; you have musician’s hands. Would it not be a pity were those beautiful hands fixed in yon gauntlets! They say men have been known to lose the use of their hands after hanging from that beam.”

Mark was trembling so that he could no longer stand.

“Sit here,” said Cromwell, and sat with him. Regaining his composure to some small extent, Mark looked about him. They were sitting on a wooden frame shaped like a trough, large enough to contain a human body. At each end of this frame were fixed windlasses on which rope was coiled.

Smeaton screamed aloud. “The rack!” he cried.

“Clever of you, Smeaton, to have guessed aright. But fear not. You are a wise young man; you will answer the questions I ask, and you will have no need of the rack nor her grim sister, the Scavenger’s Daughter.”

Mark’s mouth was dry, and his tongue was too big for it.

“I . . . I cannot . . . I lied . . .”

Cromwell lifted a hand. Two strong men appeared and, laying hands on the shivering boy, began stripping off his clothes.

Mark tried to picture the face of the Queen; he could see her clearly. He must keep that picture before him, no matter what they did to him. If he could but remember her face . . . if . . .

He was half fainting as they laid him in the frame and fastened the loops of the ropes to his wrists and ankles.

Cromwell’s face was close to his.

“Smeaton, I would not have them do this to you. Dost know what happens to men who are racked? Some lose their reason. There are some who never walk again. This is pain such as you cannot dream of, Smeaton. Just answer my questions.” He nodded to his attendants to be ready. “Smeaton, you have committed adultery with the Queen.”

“No!”

“You have admitted it. You admitted it at Stepney; you cannot go back on that.”

“I was tortured . . . The pain . . . it was too much . . .”

“So you admitted the truth. Did I not tell you that what you have known so far was naught? You are on the rack, Smeaton. One sign from me, and those men will begin to work it. Will you answer my questions?”

“I lied . . . I did not . . .”

He could see her face clearly, smiling at him; her eyes were great wells of blessed darkness; to lose oneself in that darkness would be to die, and death was the end of pain.

“Begin,” said Cromwell. The windlasses turned outwards . . . Smeaton felt his body was being torn apart; he screamed, and immediately lost consciousness.

Vinegar. That hateful smell that would not let a man rest.

“Come Smeaton! You committed adultery with the Queen.”

He could still see her face, but it was blurred now.

“You committed adultery with the Queen . . .”

There was nothing but pain, pain that was a thousand red hot needles pressing into the sockets of his arms and legs; he could feel his joints cracking; he felt they must be breaking. He began to groan.

“Yes, yes . . . yes . . . anything . . . But . . .”

“Enough!” said Cromwell, and the man at the table wrote.

Mark was sobbing. It seemed to him that they poured the accursed vinegar over his face. They sprinkled it on with the brush he had seen hanging on the wall, adding fresh smarts to his bleeding head; causing him to shrink, which in its turn made him scream afresh, for every movement was acute torture.

Cromwell’s voice came from a long way off.

“There were others, beside yourself, Smeaton.”

Others? He knew not what the man meant. He knew nothing but pain, pain, excruciating pain that shot all over his flesh; this was all the pain he had ever thought there could be; this was all the pain in the world. And more than pain of the body—pain of the mind. For he would have died for her, and he had betrayed her, he had lied; he had lied about her; he had said shameful things of her because . . . he . . . could not bear the pain.

“Their names?” said Cromwell.

“I know . . . no names.”

Not vinegar again! I cannot bear it . . . I cannot bear pain and vinegar . . . not both! He broke into deep sobs.

“You shall rest if you but tell us their names.”

How could he know of what the man was speaking? Names? What names? He thought he was a little boy at his mother’s spinning wheel. “Little Mark! He is a pretty boy. Here is a sweetmeat, Mark . . . And he sings prettily too. And he plays the virginals . . . Mark, how would you like a place at court? The King loves music mightily . . .”

“Begin again!” ordered Cromwell.

“No!” shrieked Mark.

“The names,” murmured Cromwell.

“I . . . I . . . know . . . not . . .”

It was coming again, the agony. There was never agony such as this. Burning pincers . . . the wrenching apart of his muscles . . . the wicked rack was tearing off his limbs. Vinegar. Accursed vinegar.

“Mark Smeaton, you have committed adultery with the Queen. Not you alone! You were not to blame, Mark; the Queen tempted you, and who were you, a humble musician, to say nay to the Queen! But you were not alone in this, Mark; there were others. There were noble gentlemen, Mark . . . Come now, you have had enough of this rack; men cannot be racked forever—you know that, Mark. It drives men mad. Just say their names, Mark. Come! Was it Wyatt?”

“There was none . . . I know not. I lied. Not I . . . I . . .”

No, not again. He was going mad. He could not endure more. Her face was becoming blurred. He must stop, stop. He was going mad. He would not say what they told him to. He must not say Wyatt’s name . . .

They were putting vinegar under his nose. They were going to turn the rack again.

He saw the court, as clearly as though he were there. She was smiling, and someone was standing beside her.

“Norris!” he screamed. “Norris!”

Cromwell’s voice was gentle, soothing.

“Norris, Mark. That is good. That is right. Who else, Mark? Just whisper . . .”

“Norris! Brereton! Weston!” screamed Mark.

He was unconscious as they unbound him and carried his tortured body away.

Cromwell watched them, smiling faintly. It had been a good day’s work.

The next day was the first of May. May Day was a favorite court festival which the King never failed to keep. At one time he had been the hero of the tiltyard, but now that his leg was troublesome, he must sit back and watch others take the glory of the day. The chief challenger on this day would be Lord Rochford, and the chief of the defenders, Henry Norris. It was not pleasant, when one had been more skillful than they, to realize age was creeping on, turning one into a spectator instead of a brilliant performer who had held the admiration of the entire court.

Cromwell came to see the King before he went to the tiltyard. Henry frowned on the man, not wishing to see him now, but for once Cromwell would not be waved aside; he had news, disturbing news, news which should not be withheld from His Majesty one second longer than necessary. Cromwell talked; the King listened. He listened in silence, while his eyes seemed to sink into his head and his face grew as purple as his coat.

Down in the tiltyard they were awaiting the arrival of the King. The Queen was already in her place, but obviously the jousts could not start without the King. He went to the yard, and took his place beside her. The tilt began.

He was aware of her beside him; he was trembling with jealous rage. He was thinking. This is the woman to whom I have given everything; the best years of my life, my love, my throne. For her I broke with Rome; for her I risked the displeasure of my people. And how does she reward me? She betrays me with any man that takes her fancy!

He did not know who tilted below; he did not care. Red mist swam before his eyes. He glanced sideways at her; she was more beautiful than she had ever seemed, and more remote than she had been in her father’s garden at Hever. She had tricked him; she had laughed at him; and he had loved her passionately and exclusively. He was a king, and he had loved her; she was a nobody, the daughter of a man who owed his advancement to the favor of his king . . . and she had flouted him. Never had she loved him; she had loved a throne and a crown, and she had reluctantly taken him because she could not have them without him. His throat was dry with the pain she had caused him; his heart beat wildly with anger. His eyes were murderous; he wanted her to suffer all the pain she had inflicted on him—not as he had suffered, but a thousand times more so. It galled him that even now she was not one half as jealous of Jane Seymour as he was of Norris down there in the yard.

He looked at Norris—one of his greatest and most intimate friends—handsome, not as young as those others, Weston, Brereton and Smeaton, but with a distinguished air, a charm of manner, a gracious, gentle, knightly air. He loathed Norris, of whom a short while ago he had been very fond. There was her brother, Rochford; he had liked that young man; he had been glad to raise him for his own sake as well as his sister’s; gay, amusing, devilishly witty and attractive . . . and now Cromwell had discovered that Rochford had said unforgivable, disloyal, treasonable things of his royal master; he had laughed at the King’s verses, laughed at the King’s clothes; he had most shamefully—and for this he deserved to die—disparaged the King’s manhood, had laughed at him and whispered that the reason why the King’s wives could not have children successfully was that the King himself was at fault.

Smeaton . . . that low-born creature who had nothing to recommend him but his pretty face and his music had pleased her more than he himself had. He, King of England, had begged her, had implored her, had bribed her with offers of greatness, and reluctantly she had accepted—not for love of him, but because she could not refuse a glittering crown.

He was mad with rage, mad with jealousy; furious with her that she could still hurt him thus, and that he was so vulnerable even now when he planned to cast her off. He could leap on her now . . . and if he had a knife in his hand he would plunge it into her heart; nothing would satisfy him, nothing . . . nothing but that her blood should flow; he would stab her himself, rejoicing to see her die, rejoicing that no one else should enjoy her.

The May sunshine was hot on his face; the sweat glistening across his nose. He did not see the jousts; he could see nothing but her making such voluptuous love with others as she had never given him. He had been jealous of her before; he had been ready to torture those who had glanced at her, but that had been complacent jealousy; now he could be jealous by reason of his knowledge, he could even fill in the forms of her lovers—Norris! Weston! Brereton! Wyatt? And that Smeaton! How dare she, she whom he had made a Queen! Even a humble boy could please her more than he could!

His attention was suddenly caught, for her handkerchief had fluttered from her hand; she was smiling, smiling at Norris; and Norris picked up the handkerchief, bowed, handed it to her on the point of his lance while they exchanged smiles that seemed like lovers’ smiles to Henry’s jealous eyes.

The joust continued. His tongue was thick, his throat was dry; he was filled with mad rage which he knew he could not continue to control. If he stayed here he would shout at her, he would take her by the beautiful hair which he had loved to twine about his fingers, and he would twist it about that small white neck, and tighten it and tighten it until there was no life left in the body he had loved too well.

She spoke to him. He did not hear what she said. He stood up; he was the King, and everything he did was of importance. How many of those people, who now turned startled eyes on him, had laughed at him for the complaisant husband he had appeared to be, had laughed at his blind devotion to this woman who had tricked him and deceived him with any man she fancied in his court!

It was the signal for the jousting to end. How could it go on, when the King no longer wished to see it? Anne was not so surprised, that she would attach too much importance to the strange behavior of the King; he had been curt with her often enough of late; she guessed he had left Greenwich for White Hall, as he often went to London to see Jane Seymour.

The King was on his way to White Hall. He had given orders that Rochford and Weston should be arrested as they were leaving the tiltyard. Norris he had commanded to ride back with him.

He could not take his eyes from that handsome profile; there was a certain nobility about Norris that angered the King; he was tall and straight, and his gentle character was apparent in the finely cut profile and the mobile mouth. He was a man to be jealous of. The King had heard that Norris was about to engage himself to Madge Shelton who at one time—and that not so long ago—had pleased the King himself. Henry had wished him well of Madge; she was a very attractive woman, lively and clever and good-looking. The King had tired of her quickly; the only woman he did not tire of quickly was Anne Boleyn. And she . . . The anger came surging up again. The wanton! The slut! To think that he, who had always admired virtue in women, should have been cursed with a wife who was known throughout his court for her wanton ways! It was too much. She had known that he admired virtue in those about him; and she had laughed at him, jeered at him . . . with her brother and Weston and Brereton and Norris . . .

He leaned forward in his saddle and said, his voice quivering with rage: “Norris, I know thee for what thou art, thou traitor!”

Norris almost fell from the saddle, so great was his surprise.

“Your Majesty . . . I know not . . .”

“You know not! I’ll warrant you know well enough. Ha! You start, do you! Think you not that I am a fool, a man to stand aside and let his inferiors amuse themselves with his wife. I accuse you of adultery with the Queen!”

“Sir . . . this is a joke . . .”

“This is no joke, Norris, and well you know it!”

“Then it is the biggest mistake that has ever been made.”

“You would dare to deny it?” foamed the King.

“I deny it utterly, Your Majesty.”

“Your lies and evasions will carry little weight with me, Norris.”

“I can only repeat, Sir, that I am guiltless of that of which you accuse me,” said Norris with dignity.

All the rich blood had left the King’s usually florid face, showing a network of veins against a skin grown pallid.

“’Twill be better if you do not lie to me, Norris. I am in no mood to brook such ways. You will confess to me here and now.”

“There is naught I can confess, my lord. I am guiltless of this charge you bring against me.”

“Come, come! You know, as all in the court know, how the Queen conducts herself.”

“I assure Your Most Gracious Majesty that I know naught against the Queen.”

“You have not heard rumors! Come, Norris, I warn you I am not in the mood for dalliance.”

“I have heard no rumors, Sir.”

“Norris, I offer you pardon, for you know that I have loved you well, if you will confess to your adultery.”

“I would rather die a thousand deaths, my lord, than accuse the Queen of that which I believe her, in my conscience, innocent.”

The King’s fury almost choked him. He said no more until they reached Westminster. Then, calling to him the burly bully Fitzwilliam, whom Cromwell had chosen to be his lieutenant, he bade the man arrest Norris and dispatch him to the Tower.

Anne, sitting down to supper in Greenwich Palace, felt the first breath of uneasiness.

She said to Madge Shelton: “Where is Mark? He does not seem to be in his accustomed place.”

“I do not know what has happened to Mark, Your Majesty,” answered Madge.

“If I remember aright, I did not notice him last night. I hope he is not sick.”

“I do not know, Madam,” said Madge, and Anne noticed that her cousin’s eyes did not meet hers; it was as though the girl was afraid.

Later she said: “I do not see Norris. Madge, is it not strange that they should both absent themselves? Where is Norris, Madge? You should know.”

“’He has said nothing to me, Madam.”

“What! He is indeed a neglectful lover; I should not allow it, Madge.”

Her voice had an edge to it. She well knew, and Madge well knew that though Norris was supposed to be in love with Madge, it was the Queen who received his attention. Madge was charming; she could attract easily, but she could not hold men to her as her cousin did. Weston had been attracted to Madge once, until he had felt the deeper and irresistible attraction of the Queen.

“I know not what is holding him,” said Madge.

Anne said: “You know not who is holding him, you mean!” And when she laughed, her laughter was more than usually high-pitched.

It was a strange evening; people whispered together in the corridors of the palace.

“What means this?”

“Did you see the way His Majesty left the tiltyard?”

“They say Norris, Weston and Brereton are missing.”

“Where is Mark Smeaton? Surely they would not arrest little Mark!”

The Queen was aware of this strange stillness about her; she called for the musicians, and while they played to her, sat staring at Mark’s empty place. Where was Norris? Where was Weston? Why did Brereton continue to absent himself?

She spent a sleepless night, and in the early morning fell into a heavy doze from which she awakened late. All during the morning the palace abounded in rumor. Anne heard the whispering voices, noted the compassionate glances directed at her, and was increasingly uneasy.

She sat down to dinner, determined to hide the terrible apprehension that was stealing over her. When she did not dine with the King, His Majesty would send his waiter to her with the courteous message: “Much good may it do you!” On this day she waited in vain for the King’s messenger; and as soon as the meal was over and the surnap was removed, there came one to announce the arrival at Greenwich of certain members of the council, and with them, to her disgust, was her uncle the Duke of Norfolk.

Her uncle looked truculent and self-righteous, pleased with himself, as though that which he had prophesied had come to pass. He behaved, not as a courtier to a queen, but as a judge to a prisoner.

“What means this?” demanded Anne.

“Pray be seated,” said Norfolk.

She hesitated, wanting to demand of him why he thought he might give her orders when to sit and when to stand; but something in his eyes restrained her. She sat down, her head held high, her eyes imperious.

“I would know why you think fit to come to me at this hour and disturb me with your presence. I would know . . .”

“You shall know,” said Norfolk grimly. “Smeaton is in the Tower. He had confessed to having committed adultery with you.”

She grew very pale, and stood up, her eyes flashing.

“How dare you come to me with such vile accusations!”

“Tut, tut, tut!” said Norfolk, and shook his head at her. “Norris is also in the Tower.” He lied: “He also admits to adultery with you.”

“I will not believe that he could be guilty of such falsehood! I will not believe it of either. Please leave me at once. I declare you shall suffer for your insolence.”

“Forget not,” said Norfolk, “that we come by the King’s command to conduct you to the Tower, there to abide His Highness’s pleasure.”

“I must see the King,” said Anne. “My enemies have done this. These stories you would tell me would be tragic, were they not ridiculous. . . .”

“It is not possible for you to see the King.”

“It is not possible for me to see the King. You forget who I am, do you not? I declare you will wish . . .”

“You must await the King’s pleasure, and he has said he does not wish to see you.”

She was really frightened now. The King had sent these men to arrest her and take her to the Tower; he had said he did not wish to see her. Lies were being told about her. Norris? Smeaton? Oh, no! Not those two! They had been her friends, and she would have sworn to their loyalty. What did this mean. . . . George, where was George? She needed his advice now as never before.

“If it be His Majesty’s pleasure,” she said calmly, “I am ready to obey.”

In the barge she felt very frightened. She was reminded of another journey to the Tower, of a white falcon which had been crowned by an angel, of the King, waiting to receive her there . . . eager that all the honor be could give her should be hers.

She turned to her uncle. “I am innocent of these foul charges. I swear it! I swear it! If you will but take me to the King, I know I can convince him of my innocence.”

She knew she could, if she could but see him . . . if she could but take his hands. . . . She had ever been able to do with him what she would . . . but she had been careless of late. She had never loved him; she had not much cared that he had strayed; she had thought that she had but to flatter him and amuse him, and he would be hers. She had never thought that this could happen to her, that she would be removed from him, not allowed to see him, a prisoner in the Tower.

Norfolk folded his arms and looked at her coldly. One would have thought he was her bitterest enemy rather than her kinsman.

“Your paramours have confessed,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “’Twould be better if you did likewise.”

“I have naught to confess. Have I not told you! What should I confess? I do not believe that these men have made confessions; you say so to trap me. You are my enemy; you always have been.”

“Calm yourself!” said Norfolk. “Such outbursts can avail you nothing.”

They made fast the barge; they led her up the steps; the great gate opened to admit her.

“Oh, Lord, help me,” she murmured, “as I am guiltless of that whereof I am accused.” Sir William Kingston came out to receive her, as he had on that other occasion. “Mr. Kingston,” she asked, “do I go into a dungeon?”

“No, Madam,” answered the constable, “to your own lodgings where you lay at your coronation.”

She burst into passionate weeping, and then she began to laugh hysterically; and her sobs, mingling with her laughter, were pitiful to hear. She was thinking of then and now—and that in but three short years. A queen coming to her coronation; a queen coming to her doom.

“It is too good for me!” she cried, laughing as the sobs shook her. “Jesus have mercy on me!”

Kingston watched her until her hysteria passed. He was a hard man but he could not but be moved to pity. He had seen some terrible sights in these gray, grim buildings, but he thought that this girl, laughing and crying before him, presented one of the most pathetic he had ever witnessed. He had received her on her first coming to the Tower, thought her very beautiful in her coronation robes with her hair flowing about her; he could not but compare her then with this poor weeping girl, and so was moved in spite of himself.

She wiped her eyes, controlled her laughter, and her dignity returned to her. She listened to a clock strike five, and such a familiar, homely sound reminded her of ordinary matters. Her family—what of them?

She turned to the members of the council, who were about to leave her in Kingston’s care.

“I entreat you to beseech the King in my behalf that he will be a good lord unto me,” she said; and when they had taken their leave, Kingston conducted her to her apartments.

She said: “I am the King’s true wedded wife.” Anne added: “Mr. Kingston, do you know wherefore I am here?”

“Nay!” he answered.

“When saw you the King?”

“I saw him not since I saw him in the tiltyard,” he said.

“Then Mr. Kingston, I pray you tell me where my lord father is.”

“I saw him in the court before dinner,” said Kingston.

She was silent awhile, but the question she had longed to ask, now refused to be kept back longer. “Oh, where is my sweet brother?”

He could not look at her; hard as he was he could not face the passionate entreaty in her eyes which pleaded with him to tell her that her brother was safe.

Kingston said evasively that he had last seen him at York Place.

She began to pace up and down, and as though talking to herself, she murmured: “I hear say that I shall be accused with three men, and I can say no more than ‘Nay!’” She began to weep softly, as if all the wildness had been drained out of her, and there was only sadness left. “Oh, Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower, and thou and I shall die together; and Mark, thou art here too? Oh, my mother, thou wilt die for sorrow.”

She sat brooding awhile, and then turning to him asked: “Mr. Kingston, shall I die without justice?”

He tried to comfort her. “The poorest subject the King hath, has that,” he assured her.

She looked at him a moment before she fell into prolonged and bitter laughter.

Silence hung over the palace; in the courtyards men and women stood about whispering together, glancing furtively over their shoulders, fearful of what would happen next. Wyatt was in the Tower; who next? No man in the Queen’s set felt safe. In the streets the people talked together; they knew that the Queen was a prisoner in the Tower; they knew she was to be tried on a charge of adultery. They remembered how the King had sought to rid himself of Katharine; did he seek to rid himself of Anne? Those who had shouted “Down with Nan Bullen!” now murmured “Poor lady! What will become of her?”

Jane Rochford, looking from her window, watched the courtiers and the ladies crossing the courtyard. She had expected trouble, but not such trouble. Anne in the Tower, where she herself had spent many an uneasy hour! George in the Tower! It was Jane’s turn to laugh now, for might it not be that her whispered slander had put Cromwell on the scent? Had she not seen grave Norris and gay Weston cast their longing glances at the Queen? Yes, and she had not hesitated to laugh at these matters, to point them out to others. “Ah! The Queen was born gay, and my husband tells me that the King . . . no matter, but what is a woman to do when she cannot got children. . . .” Poor George was in the Tower now, though it was whispered that no harm could come to him. It was others, who had been her lovers, who would die.

Jane threw back her head, and for some moments she was weak with hysterical laughter. Poor little Jane! they had said. Silly little Jane! They had not bothered to explain their clever remarks to her; they had cut her out, considering her too stupid to understand. And yet she had had quite a big part to play in bringing about this event. Ah, Anne! she thought, when I was in the Tower you came thither in your cloth of silver and ermine, did you not! Anne the Queen, and Jane the fool whose folly had got her accused of treason. Now, who is the fool, eh, Anne? You, you and your lovers . . . dear sister! Not Jane, for Jane is free, free of you all . . . yes, even free of George, for now she does not cry and fret for him; she can laugh at him and say “I hate you, George!”

And he will be freed, for what has he done to deserve death! And he was ever a favorite with the King. It is only her lovers who will die the deaths of traitors . . . But he loved her as well as any.

Her eyes narrowed; her heart began to pound against her side, but her mind was very calm. She could see his face clearer in her mind’s eye—calm and cynical, ever courageous. If he could stand before her, his eyes would despise her, would say “Very well, Jane, do your worst! You were always a vindictive, cruel woman.” Vindictive! He had used that word to describe her. “I think you are the most vindictive woman in the world!” He had laughed at her fondness for listening at doors.

Her cheeks flamed; she ran down the staircase and out into the warm May sunshine.

People looked at her in a shamefaced way, as they looked at those whose loved ones were in danger. They should know that George Boleyn meant nothing to her; she could almost scream at the thought of him. “Nothing! Nothing! He means nothing to me, for if I loved him once, he taught me to hate him!” She was a partisan of the true Queen Katharine. Princess Mary was the rightful heir to the throne, not the bastard Elizabeth!

She joined a little group by a fountain.

“Has aught else happened?”

“You have heard about Wyatt. . . .” said one.

“Poor Wyatt!” added another.

“Poor Wyatt!” Jane’s eyes flashed in anger. “He was guilty if ever one was!”

The man who had spoken moved away; he had been a fool to say “Poor Wyatt!” Such talk was folly.

“Ah! I fear they will all die,” said Jane. “Oh, do not look to be sorry for me. She was my sister-in-law, but I always knew. My husband is in the Tower, and he will be released because . . . because . . .” And she burst into wild laughter.

“It is the strain,” said one. “It is because George is in the Tower.”

“It is funny,” said Jane. “He will be released . . . and he . . . he is as guilty as any . . .”

They stared at her. She saw a man on the edge of that group, whom she knew to be Thomas Cromwell’s spy.

“What mean you?” he asked lightly, as though what she meant were of but little importance to him.

“He was her lover as well as any!” cried Jane. “He adored her. He could not keep his hands from her . . . he would kiss and fondle her . . .”

“George . . . ?” said one, looking oddly at her. “But he is her brother. . . .”

Jane’s eyes flashed. “What mattered that . . . to such . . . monsters! He was her lover. Dost think I, his wife, did not know these things? Dost think I never saw? Dost think I could shut my eyes to such obvious evidence? He was forever with her, forever shut away with her. Often I have surprised them . . . together. I have seen their lovers’ embrace. I have seen . . .”

Her voice was shrill as the jealousy of years conjured up pictures for her.

She closed her eyes, and went on shouting. “They were lovers I tell you, lovers! I, his wife, meant nothing to him; he loved his sister. They laughed together at the folly of those around them. I tell you I know. I have seen . . . I have seen . . .”

Someone said in a tone of disgust: “You had better go to your apartment, Lady Rochford. I fear recent happenings have been too much for you; you are overwrought.”

She was trembling from head to foot. She opened her eyes and saw that Cromwell’s spy had left the group.

The King could not stop thinking of Anne Boleyn. Cromwell had talked to him of her; Cromwell applied enthusiasm to this matter as to all others; he had closed his eyes, pressed his ugly lips together, had begged to be excused from telling the King of all the abominations and unmentionable things that his diligent probing had brought to light. The King dwelt on these matters which Cromwell had laid before him, because they were balm to his conscience. He hated Anne, for she had deceived him; if she had given him the happiest moments of his life, she had given him the most wretched also. He had, before Cromwell had forced the confession from Smeaton, thought of displacing Anne by Jane Seymour; and Jane was with child, so action must take place promptly. He knew what this meant; it could mean but one thing; he was embarking on no more divorces. There were two counts which he could bring forward to make his marriage with Anne null and void; the first was that pre-contract of hers with Northumberland; the second was his own affinity with Anne through his association with her sister Mary. Both of these were very delicate matters, since Northumberland had already sworn before the Archbishop of Canterbury that there had been no pre-contract, and this before he himself had married Anne; moreover he was in full knowledge of the matter. Could he now say that he believed her to have been pre-contracted to Northumberland when he had accepted her freedom and married her? Not very easily. And this affair with Mary; it would mean he must make public his association with Anne’s sister; and there was of course the ugly fact that he had chosen to forget about this when he had married Anne. It seemed to him that two opportunities of divorcing Anne were rendered useless by these very awkward circumstances; how could a man, who was setting himself up as a champion of chastity, use either? On the other hand how—unless he could prove his marriage to Anne illegal—could he marry Jane in time to make her issue legitimate?

There was one other way, and that was the way he wanted. He wanted it fiercely. While she lived he would continue to think of her enjoyed by and enjoying others; he could never bear that; she had meant too much to him, and still did. But their marriage had been a mistake; he had been completely happy with her before it, and he had never known a moment’s true peace since; and it was all her fault. She could not get a male child, which meant that heaven disapproved of their marriage. He could see no other way out of this but that that charming head should be cut from those elegant shoulders. His eyes glistened at the thought. Love and hatred, he knew, were closely allied. None other shall have her! was his main thought. She shall enjoy no more lovers; she shall laugh at me no more with her paramours! She shall die . . . die . . . die, for she is a black-browed witch, born to destroy men; therefore shall she be destroyed. She was guilty of adultery, and, worse still, incest; he must not forget that.

Ah, it grieved him that one he had once loved dearly should be too unworthy to live; but so it was . . . so it was. It was his painful duty to see justice done.

He said to Cranmer: “This is painful to me, Cranmer. I would such work as this had not fallen to my bitter lot!”

Cranmer was grieved too; he was terrified that this might turn back the King towards Rome. And then what of those who had urged the break? Cranmer imagined he could smell the pungent smell of burning faggots and feel the hot flames creeping up his legs.

He said that he was hurt and grieved as was His Majesty, for next to the King’s Grace he was most bound unto her of all creatures living. He would ask the King’s permission to pray for her; he had loved her for the love he had supposed her to bear to God and the gospel. He hastened to add that all who loved God must now hate her above all others, for there could never have been one who so slandered the gospel.

Poor chicken-hearted Cranmer went in fear and trembling for the next few weeks. He could wish his courage was as strong as his beliefs. What if he who had been helped by the Queen, whose duty really lay towards her now, were clapped into the Tower! Those who were high one day, were brought low the next. He thought of a girl he had loved and married in Nuremburg, whither he had gone to study Lutheran doctrines, and whom he had left in Nuremburg because he had been called home to become Archbishop of Canterbury. It had been heartbreaking to leave her behind; she was sweet and clinging; but Henry believed in the celibacy of priests, and what would he have said to a priest who had married a wife? He had left her for Henry; had left a bride for an archbishopric, had sacrificed love for a high place at court. What if he should fall from that high place to a dungeon in the Tower! From the Tower to the stake or the block was a short step indeed.

Henry found it comforting to talk with Cranmer; Cranmer was eager as he himself to do what was right.

“If she has done wrong,” said Cranmer, “then Your Grace will punish her through God.”

“Through God,” said Henry. “Though I trust she may yet prove her innocence. I would say to you, my lord, that I have no desire in the world to marry again unless constrained to do so by my subjects.”

“Amen!” said Cranmer, and tried not to show by his expression that he must think of Jane Seymour and those reports he had heard that she was already with child.

Henry patted the Archbishop’s shoulder, called him his good friend; and Cranmer begged that this sad matter should not cause the King to think less of the gospel.

“I but turn to it more, good Cranmer.”

Cranmer left happier, and the King was relieved by his visit.

He called to his son, the young Duke of Richmond, and would have him stand before him that he might embrace him.

“For I feel tender towards you this night, my son.”

He was thinking of Anne even as he spoke. How often had she discountenanced him! How often had she disturbed him! And she, laughing at him . . . in the arms of his courtiers . . . Norris . . . Weston. . . . Their faces leaped up in his mind, and were beside Anne’s, laughing at him.

Fiercely he embraced his son; tears of self-pity came into his eyes and brimmed over onto the boy’s head.

“Your Majesty is deeply disturbed,” said the young Duke.

Henry’s voice broke on a sob. He remembered a rumor that when he had thought of going to France and leaving Anne as Regent, she had talked wildly of getting rid of Mary; some had said she meant to poison her.

He held the boy against his chest.

“You and your sister Mary ought to thank God for escaping that cursed and venomous whore who tried to poison you both!” he declared.

Anne was desolate. The weary days were passing. There were with her two women, day and night, whom she hated and knew to be her enemies. These had been sent as her attendants by command of the King. They were a certain Mrs. Cosyns, a spy and a talebearer, and her aunt, Lady Boleyn, who was the wife of her uncle, Sir Edward. This aunt had always been jealous of her niece, right from the time when she was a precocious child considered in the family to be clever. These two, at Cromwell’s instigation, wore her down with their questions as they tried to trap her into admissions; they were sly-faced, ugly women, envious, jealous women who enjoyed their position and were made most gleeful by the distress of the Queen. Every chance remark that fell from her lips was repeated with some distortion to make it incriminating. This was just what Cromwell wanted, and he was therefore pleased with these two women. Those ladies whom she would have liked to have beside her, were not allowed to come to her. She longed to talk with Margaret Lee and Mary Wyatt, with her own sister, Mary, with Madge; but no, she must be followed, no matter where she went, by these two odious females or by Lady Kingston who was as cold as her husband and had little sympathy, having seen too much suffering in her capacity of wife of the Constable of the Tower to have much to spare for one who, before this evil fate had befallen her, had enjoyed in plenty the good things of life.

But news filtered through to Anne. Her brother had been arrested. On what charge? Incest! Oh, but this was grotesque! How could they say such things! It was a joke; George would laugh; they could not hurt George. What had George done to deserve this? “For myself,” she cried, “I have been foolish and careless and over-fond of flattery. I have been vain and stupid. . . . But oh, my sweet brother, what have you ever done but help me! I would die a thousand deaths rather than you should suffer so through me.”

The sly women nodded, carefully going over what she had said. By eliminating a word here, a sentence there, they could give a very good account of themselves to Thomas Cromwell.

“Wyatt here!” she exclaimed. “Here in the Tower?” And she wept for Wyatt, calling him Dear Thomas, and was over-wrought, recalling the happy days of childhood.

“Norris is here. Norris accused me. . . . Oh, I cannot believe it of Norris. . . . Oh, I cannot! He would never betray me.”

She could not believe that Norris would betray her! Then, argued Cromwell, if she cannot believe he would betray her, is not that an admission that there is something to betray?

When she was tired, they would pretend to soothe her, laying wily traps.

“What of the unhappy gentlemen in the Tower?” she wanted to know. “Will any make their beds?”

“No, I’ll warrant you; they’ll have none to make their beds!”

She showed great solicitude for the comfort of her paramours, they reported.

“Ballads will be made about me,” she said, smiling suddenly. “None can do that better than Wyatt.”

She spoke with great admiration and feeling of Thomas Wyatt, they then told Cromwell.

She wept bitterly for her baby. “What will become of her? Who will care for her now? I feel death close to me, because I know of her whom the King would set up in my place, but how can he set up a new queen when he has a queen already living? And what of my baby? She is not yet three. It is so very young, is it not? Could I not see her? Oh, plead for me please! Have you never thought how a mother might long for a last glimpse of her daughter! No, no. Bring her not to me. What would she think to see me thus! I should weep over her and frighten her, since the thought of her frightens me, for she is so very young to be left alone in a cruel world. . . . Say not that I wish to see my baby.”

Her eyes were round with fear. They would be so clever at thinking up fresh mental torture for her to bear. Not that though! Not Elizabeth!

“She will be playing in her nursery now. What will become of her? After all, is she not the King’s daughter?”

Then she began to laugh shrilly, and her laughter ended in violent weeping. For she thought, They will call her bastard now perhaps . . . and this is a judgment on me for my unkindness to Katharine’s daughter Mary. Oh, Katharine, forgive me. I knew not then what it meant to have a daughter. And what if the King . . .

But she could not think; she dared not. Oh, but she knew him, cold and relentless and calculating, and having need to rid himself of her. Already she was accused with five men, and one of them her own, and so innocently loved, brother. What if he said Elizabeth were not his child? What will he care for her, hating her mother? And if he married Jane Seymour . . . if she is Queen, will she be kind to my baby daughter . . . as I was to Mary? Jesus, forgive me. I was wicked. I was wrong . . . and now this is my punishment. It will happen to me as it happened to Katharine, and there will be none to care for my daughter, as there was none to care for Mary.

Such thoughts must set her weeping; then remembering that when she had become Henry’s Queen she had chosen as her device “Happiest of Women,” she laughed bitterly and long.

“How she weeps! How she laughs!” whispered the women. “How unstable she is . . . hysterical and afraid! Does not her behavior tend to show her guilt?”

She talked a good deal; she did not sleep; she lay staring into the darkness, thinking back over the past, trying to peer into the future. Despair enveloped her. The King is cruel and cold; he can always find a righteous answer when he wishes to do some particularly cruel deed. I am lost. There is naught can save me now! Hope came to her. But he loved me once; once there was nothing he would not do for me. Even to the last I could amuse him, and I tried hard enough. . . . I could delight him more than any an I gave myself up to it. He does this but to try me. He will come to me soon; all will be well.

But no! I am here in the Tower and they say evil things of me. My friends are here. George, my darling, my sweet brother, the only one I could truly trust in the whole world. And they know that! That is why they have sent you here, George; that is why they imprison you; so that I shall have none to help me now.

She asked for writing materials. She would write; she would try to forget his cruel eyes; she would try to forget him as he was now and remember him as he used to be when he had said the name of Anne Boleyn was the sweetest music to his ears.

The words flowed impulsively from her pen.

“Your Grace’s displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, that what to write or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. . . .”

She wrote hastily, hope coming back to her as her pen moved swiftly along.

“Never a prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn—with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself if God and your Grace’s pleasure had so been pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation, or received queenship, but that I always looked for such alteration as I now found; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your Grace’s fancy, the least alteration was fit and sufficient (I knew) to draw that fancy to some other subject.”

She paused. Was she over-bold? She felt death close to her and cared not.

“You have chosen me from low estate to be your Queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire; if then you found me worthy of such honor, good your Grace, let not any light fancy or bad counsel of my enemies, withdraw your princely favor from me, neither let that stain—that unworthy stain—of a disloyal heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on me and on the infant Princess your daughter Elizabeth.

“Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and as my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shames; then shall you see either my innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. So that whatever God and you may determine of, your Grace may be freed from an open censure, and mine offence being so lawfully proved, your Grace may be at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me, as an unfaithful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party, for whose sake I am now as I am; whose name I could, some good while since, have pointed unto; your Grace being not ignorant of my suspicion therein.”

Her cheeks burned with anger as her pen flew on.

“But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you the joying of your desired happiness, then, I desire of God that he will pardon your great sin herein, and, likewise, my enemies, the instruments thereof, and that He will not call you to a strait account of your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at his general judgment seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear; and in whose just judgment I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me) mine innocency shall be openly known, and sufficiently cleared.”

She laid down her pen, a bitter smile about her lips. That would touch him as she knew so well how to touch him, and as she, among all those around him, alone had the courage to touch him. She was reckless of herself, and though she may have been foolish and vain she clung to her magnificent courage. If he ever read those words with their reference to the judgment of God he would tremble in his shoes, and no matter how he might present them to his conscience, they would disturb him to the end of his days. He would think of them when he lay with Jane Seymour; and she exulted in that power over him which she would wield from the grave. She was sure that he intended to murder her; in cold blood he planned this, as any commoner might plan to put away a wife of whom he had tired, by beating her to death or stabbing her with a knife or throwing her body into the dark river. She was terrified, experiencing all the alarm of a woman who knows herself to be followed in the dark by a footpad with murder in his heart. Such women, who were warned of an impending fate, might call for help; but there was none who could come to her aid, for her murderer would be the mightiest man in England whose anger none could curb, for whose crimes the archbishops themselves would find a righteous excuse.

She began to cry in very fear, and her thoughts went from her own troubles to those of the men who would be required to shed their blood with her, and she blamed herself, for was it not her love of flattery that had led them to express their feelings too openly? Was it not her desire to show the King that though he might prefer others, there were always men to prefer her, which had brought about this tragedy?

She took up her pen once more.

“My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake.

“If ever I have found favor in your sight—if ever the name of Anne Boleyn have been pleasing in your ears—then let me obtain this request; and so I will leave to trouble your Grace any further: with mine earnest prayer to the Trinity to have your Grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions.

“From my doleful prison in the Tower, the 6th of May.

—Anne Boleyn.”

She felt better after having written that letter; she would keep the writing materials with her that she might write now and then. She was wretched though, wondering how her letter would reach the King. She pictured its falling into Cromwell’s hands, which was likely, for he had his spies all about her, and it could hardly be hoped that the letter would find its way through them to the King. If by good luck it did, he could not be unmoved by her words, she felt sure. He who had once upbraided her for not writing frequently enough, surely would read this last letter.

But she was afraid, sensing her doom, knowing her husband too well, knowing how he was placed, how he must find a way to marry Jane Seymour and appease his conscience; and thinking on these matters, hope, which had come to her through the writing of the letter, was swallowed up once more in deepest despondency.

Smeaton lay in his cell. He was no longer a beautiful boy; his dark curls were tangled and matted with blood and sweat; his delicate features were swollen with pain and grief. It seemed to him that there were but two emotions in the world—that of suffering pain and that of having no pain. One was agony; the other bliss.

He had scarcely been aware of the solemn atmosphere of the courtroom of the men who stood on trial with him; he had answered when he had been questioned, answered mechanically as they wanted him to answer, for he knew that not to do so would be to invite pain to come to him once more.

“Guilty!” he cried. “Guilty! Guilty!” And before his eyes he saw, not the judge and the jurymen, but the dark room with the smell of blood and death about it, mingling with the odor of vinegar; he saw the dim light, heard the sickening creak of rollers, felt again the excruciating pain of bones being torn from their sockets.

He could but walk slowly to the place assigned to him, every movement was agony; he would never stand up straight again; he would never walk with springy step; he would never let his fingers caress a musical instrument and draw magic from it.

A big bearded man came to him as he lay in his cell and would have speech with him. He held a paper in his hand. He said Mark must sign the paper.

“Dost know the just reward of low born traitors, Mark?” a voice whispered in his ear.

No! He did know know; he could not think; pain had robbed him of his power to use both his limbs and his mind.

Hung by the neck, but not to die. Disemboweled. Did Mark wish him to go on? Had not Mark seen how the monks of the Charterhouse had died? They had died traitors’ deaths, and Mark was a traitor as they had been.

Pain! He screamed at the thought of it; it was as though every nerve in his body cried out in protest. A prolongation of that torture he had suffered in that gloomy dungeon? No, no! Not that!

He was sobbing, and the great Fitzwilliam, leaning over him, whispered: “’Tis not necessary, Mark. ’Tis not necessary at all. Just pen your name to this paper, and it shall not happen to you. You shall have naught to fear.”

Paper? “Where is it?” asked Mark, not What is it? He dared not ask that, though he seemed to see the Queen’s beautiful black eyes reproaching him. He was not quite sure whether he was in the cell or in her presence chamber; he was trying to explain to her. Ah, Madam, you know not the pains of the torture chamber; it is more than human flesh can stand.

“Sign here, Mark. Come! Let me guide your hand.”

“What then? What then?” he cried. “No more . . . no more. . . .”

“No more, Mark. All you need do is sign your name. Subscribe here, Mark, and you shall see what will come of it.”

His hand guided by Fitzwilliam, he put his name to the statement prepared for him.

Sir Francis Weston, the beautiful and very rich young man, whose wife and mother offered the King a very large ransom for his freedom, could face death more stoically. So it was with Sir William Brereton. Handsome, debonair, full of the spirit of adventure they had come to court; they had seen others go to the block on the flimsiest of excuses. They lived in an age of terror and had been prepared for the death sentence from the moment they entered the Tower. Guiltless they were, but what of that? Their jury was picked; so were the judges; the result was a foregone conclusion and the trial a farce; and they were knowledgeable enough to know this. They remembered Buckingham who had gone to the block ostensibly on a charge of treason, but actually because of his relationship to the King; now they, in their turn, would go to the block on a charge of treason, when the real reason for their going was the King’s desire to rid himself of his present Queen and take another before her child was born. It was brutal, but it was simple. Court law was jungle law, and the king of beasts was a roaring man-eating lion who spared none—man nor woman—from his lustful egoistical demands.

They remembered that they were gentlemen; they prayed that no matter what befell them, they might go on remembering it. Mark Smeaton had perjured his soul and sullied his honor; they trusted that whatever torment they were called upon to face, they would not sink so low. They took their cue from their older companion, Norris, who, grave and stoical, faced his judges.

“Not guilty!” said Norris.

“Not guilty!” echoed Weston, and Brereton.

It mattered not; they were found guilty, and sentenced to death, all four of them—the block for three of them and the hangman’s noose for Mark on account of his low birth.

The King was angry with these three men. How dared they stand up in the courtroom, looking such haughty heroes, and pronounce in ringing tones that they were not guilty! The people were sentimental, and he thanked God that Anne had ever been disliked and resented by them. They would not have a word to say in favor of her now; they would be glad to see the end of her, the witch, the would-be prisoner, the black-browed sorceress, the harlot. He thanked God there would be none ready to defend her. Her father? Oh, Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, was not very much in evidence these days. He was sick and sorry, and ready to obey his King, fearful lest he should be brought in to face trial with his wicked daughter and son. Norfolk? There was none more pleased than Norfolk to see Anne brought low. They had been quarreling for years. Suffolk, her old enemy, was rubbing his hands in glee. Northumberland? A pox on Northumberland! Sick and ailing! A fine champion, he! He should be appointed one of her judges and he should see what would happen to him were he to oppose his King. He had been in trouble over Anne Boleyn before; doubtless he would be so again. There was none to fear. My Lord Rochford, that foul, unnatural monster, was safe under lock and key, and what had he with which to defend himself and his sister but a tongue of venom! Anne should see what price she would pay for laughing at the King, first bewitching him and then deceiving him. No one else, girl, he said viciously, shall kiss your pretty lips, unless they like to kiss them cold; nor would they find the head of you so lovely without the body that goes with it!

But a pox on these men, and all would-be martyrs! There they stood, side by side, on trial for their lives, and though Cromwell could be trusted to find evidence against them, though they were traitors, lechers, all of them, people would murmur: “So young to die! So handsome! So noble! Could such bravery belong to guilty men? And even if they are guilty, who has not loved recklessly in his life? Why, the King himself . . .”

Enough! He called Cromwell to him.

“Go to Norris!” he commanded. “I liked that man. Why, he was an intimate friend of mine. Tell him I know the provocation of the Queen. Tell him I know how she could, an she wished it, be wellnigh irresistible. Go to him and tell him I will be merciful. Offer him his life in exchange for a full confession of his guilt.”

Cromwell went, and returned.

“Ah, Your Most Clement Majesty, that there should be such ungrateful subjects in your realm!”

“What said he then?” asked Henry, and he was trembling for the answer. He wanted to show Norris’s confession to his court; he would have it read to his people.

“His reply is the same as that he made Your Majesty before. He would rather die a thousand deaths than accuse the Queen who is innocent.”

Henry lost control.

“Hang him up then!” he screamed. “Hang him up!”

He stamped out of the room and he seemed to see the bodyless head of More and there was a mocking smile about the mouth.

“A thousand curses on all martyrs!” muttered Henry.

The room in which Anne and her brother would be tried had been hastily erected within the great hall of the Tower. Courageously she entered it, and faced that row of peers who had been selected by the King to try her, and she saw at once that he had succeeded in confronting her with her most bitter enemies. Chief among them was the Duke of Suffolk, his hateful red face aglow with pleasure; there was also the young Duke of Richmond who was firmly against her, because he had had hopes of the throne, illegitimate though he might be; he was influenced by his father the King, and the Duke of Norfolk who had become his father-in-law when he had married the Lady Mary Howard, the Duke’s daughter.

Anne had schooled herself for the ordeal; she was determined that she would not break down before her enemies; but she almost lost control to see Percy among those whom the King had named Lord-Triers. He looked at her across the room, and it seemed to them both that the years were swept away and they were young and in love and from the happiness of a little room in Hampton Court were taking a terrified peep into a grim future. Percy, weak with his physical defects, turned deathly pale at the sight of her; but she lifted her head higher and smiled jauntily, shaming him with her readiness to face whatever life brought her. Percy was not of her caliber. He crumpled and fell to the floor in a faint. How could he condemn her whom he had never been able to forget? And yet, how could he not condemn her, when it was the King’s wish that she should be condemned? Percy could not face this, as years before he had not been able to face the wrath of Wolsey, his father and the King. He was genuinely ill at the prospect and had to be carried out of the courtroom.

Thank God, thought Anne, that her father was not among those who were to try her! She had feared he would be, for it would have been characteristic of Henry to have forced him to this and characteristic of her father that he would have obeyed his King and sent his daughter to her death. She had escaped the shame of seeing her father’s shame.

She listened to the list of crimes for which she was being tried. She had, they were saying, wronged the King with four persons and also her brother. She was said to have conspired with them against the King’s life. Cromwell’s ingenuity had even supplied the dates on which the acts had taken place; she could smile bitterly at these, for the first offense—supposed to have been committed with Norris—was fixed for an occasion when she, having just given birth to Elizabeth, had not left the lying-in chamber.

As she faced her accusers she seemed to see the doubts that beset them. There could not be any of these men who did not know that she was here because the King wished to replace her with Jane Seymour. Oh, justice! she thought. If I could but be sure of justice!

The decision of the peers was not required to be unanimous; a majority was all that was necessary to destroy her. But Suffolk’s hot eyes were surveying those about him as though to tell them he watched for any who would disobey the King’s desires.

Outside in the streets, where men and women stood about in groups, the atmosphere was stormy. If Anne could have seen these people her spirits would have been lightened. Many eyes wept for her, though once their owners had abused her. At the height of her power they had called her whore; now they could not believe that one who carried herself with such nobility and courage could be anything but innocent. Mothers remembered that she had a child scarcely three years old. A terrible, tragic fate overhung her, and she had it before her.

Suffolk knew what people were thinking; he knew what some of the Lord-Triers were thinking. This was a reign of terror. Bluff Hal had removed his mask and shown a monster who thought nothing of murder and of inhuman torture to herald it in. A man would be a fool to run his body into torment for the sake of Anne Boleyn. Suffolk won the day and they pronounced her guilty.

“Condemned to be burnt or beheaded, at the King’s pleasure!” said the Duke of Norfolk, savoring each word as though it held a flavor very sweet to his palate.

She did not change color; she did not flinch. She could look into the cruel eyes of her enemies and she could say, her voice firm, her head high, her eyes imperious: “God hath taught me how to die, and he will strengthen my faith.”

She smiled haughtily at the group of men. “I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done, but then they must be other than those which have been produced in court.”

Even Suffolk must squirm at those words; even Norfolk must turn his head away in shame.

But her voice broke suddenly when she mentioned her brother.

“As for my brother and those others who are unjustly accused, I would willingly suffer many deaths to deliver them.”

The Lord Mayor was very shaken, knowing now for certain what he had before suspected, that they had found nothing against her, only that they had resolved to make an occasion to get rid of her.

Back in her room, Anne relived it over and over again; she thanked God for the strength which had been hers; she prayed that she might have sustained courage.

Lady Kingston unbent a little now that she had been condemned to die and Mary Wyatt was allowed to come to her.

“You cannot know what comfort it is to me to see you here, Mary,” she said.

“You cannot know what comfort it gives me to come,” answered Mary.

“Weep not, Mary. This was inevitable. Do you not see it now? From the first moments in the garden of Hever. . . . But my thoughts run on. You know not of that occasion; nor do I wish to recall it. Ah, Mary, had I been good and sweet and humble as you ever were, this would never have befallen me. I was ambitious, Mary. I wanted a crown upon my head. Yet, looking back, I know not where I could have turned to tread another road. You must not weep, dear Mary, for soon I shall be past all pain. I should not talk of myself. What of George, Mary? Oh, what news of my sweet brother?”

Mary did not answer, but the tears, which she could not restrain, were answer enough.

“He defended himself most nobly, that I do not need to be told,” said Anne. Her eyes sparkled suddenly. “I wonder he did not confound them. Mary, dost remember old days at Blickling and Hever! When he had done aught that merited punishment, could he not always most convincingly defend himself? But this time . . . what had he done? He had loved his sister. May not a brother love his sister, but there must be those to say evil of him? Ah, George, this time when you were truly innocent, you could not save youself. This was not Blickling, George! This was not Hever! This was the wicked court of Henry, my husband, who now seeks to murder me as he will murder you!”

“Be calm,” said Mary. “Anne, Anne, you were so brave before those men. You must be brave now.”

“I would rather be the victim of a murderer, Mary, than be a murderer. Tell me of George.”

“He was right noble in his defense. Even Suffolk could scarce accuse him. There was much speculation in court. It was said: ‘None could name this man guilty!’”

“And what said they of . . . me and George?”

“They said what you would have expected them to say! Jane was there . . . a witness against him.”

“Jane!” Anne threw back her head and laughed. “I would not be in Jane’s shoes for years of life. Liar and perjurer that she is. She . . . out of jealousy, to bear false witness against her husband! But what could she say of him and me? What could she say?”

“She said that on one occasion he did come to your chamber while you were abed. He came to make some request and he kissed you. There seemed little else. It was shameful. They had naught against him. They could not call him guilty, but he . . .”

“Tell me all, Mary. Hold nothing back from me. Know you not what this means to me to have you here with me at last, after my dreary captivity with them that hate me? Be frank with me, Mary. Hold nothing back, for frankness is for friends.”

“They handed him a paper, Anne, for on it was a question they dared not ask and he . . .”

“Yes? What did he?”

“He, knowing how it would sorely discountenance them, should he read aloud what was written, read it aloud, in his reckless and impulsive way.”

“Ah! I know him well. For so would I have done in an unguarded moment. He had nothing but contempt for that group of selected peers—selected by the King whose one object is to destroy us—and he showed it by reading aloud that which was meant to be kept secret. It was of the King?”

Mary nodded. “That the King was not able to have children; that there was no virtue or potency in him. He was asked if he had ever said such things. And he read that aloud. No man could be allowed to live after that. But he meant to show his contempt for them all; he meant to show that he knew he had been condemned to die before the trial began. He asked then to plead guilty, solely that he might prevent his property passing into the hands of the King. The King could have his life but he should not have his goods.”

“Oh, George!” cried Anne. “And you to scold me for reckless folly! Mary, I cannot but weep, not for myself but for my brother. I led the way; he followed. I should go to the block for my careless ambition, for my foolish vanity. But that I should take him with me! Oh, Mary, I cannot bear that, so I weep and am most miserable. Oh, Mary, sit by me. Talk to me of our childhood. Thomas! What of Thomas? I cannot bear to think on those I have loved and brought to disaster.”

“Grieve not for Thomas. He would not have it so. He would not have you shed one tear for him, for well you know he ever loved you dearly. We hope for Thomas. He was not tried with the rest. Perhaps he will just be a prisoner awhile, for it is strange that he should not be tried with the others.”

“Pray for him, Mary. Pray that this awful fate may not befall him. Mayhap they have forgotten Thomas. Oh, pray that they have forgotten Thomas.”

When Mary left her she lay on her bed. She felt happier. Rather my lot, she thought, than the King’s. Rather my lot, than Jane Rochford’s. I would rather mine were the hapless head that rolled in the straw, than mine the murderous hand that signs the death warrant.

She was preparing herself for a journey. A summons had been brought to her that she was to make ready to go to the Archbishop at Lambeth. She was to go quietly; this was the King’s order. He wanted no hysterical crowds on the river’s bank to cheer her barge. He himself had received a copy of the summons, but he would not go; he would send his old proctor, Doctor Sampson, to represent him. Come face to face with Anne Boleyn! Never! There were too many memories between them. What if she tried her witcheries on him once more!

He felt shaken and ill at ease. He was sleeping badly; he would wake startled from bad dreams, calling her name and, with the daze of sleep still on him, think she was there beside him. He had dispatched Jane Seymour to her father’s house, since that was the most seemly place for her to be in. He did not wish to have her with him during the critical days, as he had announced that he was deeply grieved at the falseness of his wife and would not take another unless his people wished it. Jane should therefore not attract much attention. Her condition—early in pregnancy though she was—must be considered. So Henry sat alone, awaiting news from Lambeth; whilst Anne, who would have liked to refuse to answer the summons, left the Tower and went quietly up the river.

She was conducted to the crypt of the Archbishop’s residence and awaiting her there were Cranmer, looking troubled but determined to do his duty; Cromwell, looking more sly and ugly than ever; Doctor Sampson, to represent the King; and two doctors, Wotton and Barbour, who, most farcically, were supposed to represent her.

She had not been there for more than a few moments when she realized their cunning purpose.

Cranmer’s voice was silky. There was no man who could present a case as he could. His voice almost caressed her, expressing sympathy for her most unhappy state.

She was under the sentence of death, he said, by beheading . . . or burning.

Did he mean to stress that last word, or did she imagine this? The way in which he said it made her hot with fear; she felt as though the flames were already scorching her flesh.

The King’s conscience, went on Cranmer, troubled him sorely. She had been pre-contracted to Northumberland! That, she would understand, would make her marriage with the King illegal.

She cried: “Northumberland was brought before you. You yourself accepted . . .”

Cranmer was quiet and calm, so capable of adjusting his opinion, so clever, so intellectual, so impossible to confound.

The King himself had been indiscreet. Yes, His Majesty was ready to admit it. An association with Anne’s sister. An affinity created.

Cranmer spread his hands as though to say, Now, you see how it is. You were never really married to the King!

She could hold her head high in the crypt at Lambeth as she had in that other court where they had condemned her. They would need her acknowledgment of this, would they not? Well, they should never get it.

Cranmer was pained and sad. He had loved her well, he said.

She thought, How I hate all hypocrites! Fool I may be but I am no hypocrite. How I hate you, Cranmer! I helped you to your present position. You too, Cromwell. But neither of you would think of helping me! But Cranmer I hate more than Cromwell for Cranmer is a hypocrite, and perhaps I hate this in men because I am married to the most shameless one that ever lived.

Cranmer was talking in his deep sonorous voice. He had a gift for making suggestions without expressing actual statements. She was thinking, I have my little daughter to consider. She shall never be called bastard.

Cranmer’s voice went droning on. He was hinting at her release. There was a pleasant convent at Antwerp. What of the young men whose fate she deplored and whose innocence she proclaimed? All the country knew how she esteemed her brother, and he her. Was he to go to the block? What of her daughter? The King would be more inclined to favor a child whose mother had impressed him with her good sense.

Anne’s mind was working quickly. It was painfully clear. She must make a choice. If her marriage to the King were proved null and void then that was all he need ask for. He could marry Jane Seymour immediately if his marriage with Anne Boleyn had been no marriage at all. The child Jane carried would be born in wedlock. And for this, Anne was offered a convent in Antwerp, the lives of her brother and those innocent men who were to die with him. And if not . . . Once more she was hot with the imaginary fire that licked her limbs. And what would her refusal mean in any case? If the King had decided to disinherit Elizabeth, he would surely do so. He had ever found excuses for what he wished to do.

She had something to gain and nothing to lose, for if she had not been married to the King, how could she have committed adultery? The affairs of Lady Anne Rochford and the Marchioness of Pembroke could not be called treason to the King.

Her hopes were soaring. She thought, Oh, George, my darling, I have saved you! You shall not die. Gladly I will throw away my crown to save you!

Cromwell went back to his master rubbing his ugly hands with pleasure. Once more he had succeeded. The King was free to take a new wife whenever he wished, for he had never been married to Anne Boleyn. She herself had agreed upon it.

It was over. They had tricked her. At the King’s command she had stood and watched them as they passed by her window on their way to Tower Hill. She had sacrificed her own and her daughter’s rights in vain. Although she was no queen, these men had died. It was not reasonable; it was not logical; it was simply murder.

She herself had yet another day to live through. Mary Wyatt came to tell her how nobly these men had died, following the example of George, how they had made their speeches, which etiquette demanded, on the scaffold, how they had met their deaths bravely.

“What of Smeaton?” she asked. She thought of him still as a soft-eyed boy, and she could not believe that he would not tell the truth on the scaffold. Mary was silent and Anne cried out: “Has he not cleared me of the public shame he hath done me!” She surveyed Mary’s silent face in horror. “Alas,” she said at length and in great sorrow, “I fear his soul will suffer from the false witness he hath borne.”

Her face lightened suddenly.

“Oh, Mary,” she cried, “It will not be long now. My brother and the rest are now, I doubt not, before the face of the greater King, and I shall follow tomorrow.”

When Mary left her her sadness returned. She wished they had not given her fresh hope in the Lambeth Crypt. She had resigned herself to death, and then they had promised her she should live, and life was so sweet. She was twenty-nine and beautiful; and though she had thought herself weary of living, when they had given her that peep into a possible future, how eagerly she had grasped at it!

She thought of her daughter, and trembled. Three is so very young. She would not understand what had happened to her mother. Oh, let them be kind to Elizabeth.

She asked that Lady Kingston might come to her, and when the woman came she locked the door and with tears running down her cheeks, asked that Lady Kingston would sit in her chair of state.

Lady Kingston herself was moved in face of such distress.

“It is my duty to stand in the presence of the Queen, Madam,” she said.

“That title is gone,” was the answer. “I am a condemned person, and, I have no estate left me in this life, but for the clearing of my conscience, I pray you sit down.”

She began to weep, and her talk was incoherent, and humbly she fell upon her knees and begged that Lady Kingston would go to Mary, the daughter of Katharine, and kneel before her and beg that she would forgive Anne Boleyn for the wrong she had done her.

“For, my Lady Kingston,” she said, “till this be accomplished, my conscience cannot be quiet.”

After that she was more at peace and did not need to thrust the thought of her daughter from her mind.

The news was brought to her that her death should not take place at the appointed hour; there had been a postponement. She had been most gay, and to learn that she was to have a few more hours on Earth was a disappointment to her.

“Mr. Kingston,” she said, “I hear I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.”

“The pain will be little,” he told her gently, “it is so subtle.”

She answered; “I have heard say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck.”

She embraced it with her hands and laughed; and when her laughter had subsided, a great peace came to her. She had another day to live and she had heard that the King wished the hour of her execution to be kept secret, and that it was not to take place on Tower Hill where any idle spectator might see her die, but on the enclosed green; for the King feared the reactions of the people.

The evening passed; she was gay and melancholy in turns; she joked about her end. “I shall be easily nicknamed—‘Queen Anne . . . sans tete.’”

She occupied herself in writing her own dirge.

“Oh death, rock me asleep,

Bring on my quiet rest,

Let pass my very guiltless ghost

Out of my careful breast.

Ring out the doleful knell

Let its sound my death tell;

For I must die,

There is no remedy,

For now I die . . .”

She dressed herself with such care that it might have been a state banquet to which she was going instead of to the scaffold. Her robe of gray damask was trimmed with fur and low cut; beneath this showed a kirtle of crimson. Her headdress was trimmed with pearls. She had never looked more beautiful; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brilliant, and all the misery and fear of the last weeks seemed to have been lifted from her face.

Attended by four ladies, among them her beloved Mary Wyatt, with much dignity and grace she walked to the green before the church of St. Peter ad Vincula. Slowly and calmly she ascended the steps to that platform which was strewn with straw; and she could smile because there were so few people to witness her last moments, smile because the hour and place of her execution had had to be kept secret from the people.

Among those who had gathered about the scaffold she saw the Dukes of Suffolk and Richmond, but she could feel no enmity towards these two now. She saw Thomas Cromwell, whose eldest son was now married to Jane Seymour’s sister. Ah, thought Anne, when my head has rolled into the sawdust, he will feel an impediment lifted and his relationship to the King almost an accomplished fact.

She called to her one whom she knew to be of the King’s privy chamber, and said she would send a message by him to the King.

“Commend me to His Majesty,” she said, “and tell him that he hath ever been constant in his career of advancing me; from a private gentlewoman, he made me a marchioness, from a marchioness a queen, and now he hath left no higher degree of honor, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.”

The messenger trembled for she was a woman about to die, and how could he dare carry such a message to the King!

Then she would, after the etiquette of the scaffold, make her dying speech.

“Good Christian people,” she said, “I am come hither to die, according to law, for by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it . . .”

Her ladies were so overcome with weeping that she, hearing their sobs, was deeply moved.

“I come hither to accuse no man,” she continued, “nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused, as I know full well that aught that I say in my defense doth not appertain to you . . .”

When she spoke of the King, her words were choked. Cromwell moved nearer to the scaffold. This was the moment he and the King had most feared. But with death so near she cared nothing for revenge. All the bitterness had gone out of her. Cromwell would arrange the words she spoke, not only as they should best please the King, but also that they should mislead the public into thinking she had died justly. The people must be told that at the end she had only praise for the King, that she spoke of him as a merciful prince and a gentle sovereign lord.

Her voice cleared and she went on: “If any person will meddle with my cause I require them to judge the best. Thus I take my leave of the world and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.”

It was time for her now to lay her head upon the block and there was not one of her attendants whose hands were steady enough to remove her headdress; they could only turn from her in blind misery. She smiled and did this herself; then she spoke to each of them gently, bidding them not to grieve and thanking them for their services to her. Mary she took aside and to her gave a little book of devotions as a parting gift and whispered into her ear a message of good cheer that she might give it to her brother in the Tower.

Then she was ready. She laid her head upon the block. Her lips were murmuring her own verses.

“Farewell my pleasures past,

Welcome my present pain,

I feel my torments so increase

That life cannot remain.

Sound now the passing bell,

Rung is my doleful knell,

For its sound my death doth tell.

Death doth draw nigh,

Sound the knell dolefully,

For now I die.”

She was waiting now, waiting for that swift stroke, that quick and subtle pain.

“Oh, Lord God have pity on my soul. Oh, Lord God . . .”

Her lips were still moving as her head lay on the straw.

The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was weeping bitterly as she went about the Lambeth House. Catherine Howard flung herself onto her bed and wept. Over the city of London hung silence. The Queen was dead.

At Richmond the King waited for the booming of the gun which would announce the end of Anne Boleyn. He waited in anxiety; he was terrified of what she might say to those watching crowds. He knew that the people who had never accepted her as their Queen were now ready to make of her a martyr.

His horse was restive, longing to be off; but not more so than he. Would he never hear the signal! What were they at, those fools? What if some had planned a rescue! He was hot at the thought. There had been men who loved her dearly and none knew better than he did, how easy it was to do that. She had changed his life when she came into it; what would she do when she went out of it?

He pictured her last moments; he knew she would show great courage; he knew she would show dignity; he knew she would be beautiful enough to stir up pity in the hearts of all who beheld her. It was well that but few were sure of hour and place.

Around him were hounds and huntsmen. This night the hunt would end at Wolf Hall whether the stag led them there or not. But the waiting was long, and try as he might he could not forget Anne Boleyn.

He spoke to his conscience, “Thank God I can now leave Mary without constant fear that she will meet a horrible end. Thank God I discovered the evil ways of this harlot.”

He had done right, he assured himself. Katharine had suffered through her; Mary had suffered. Thank God he had found out in time! Thank God he had turned his affections on a more worthy object!

What would the people say when they heard the gun booming from the Tower? What would they say of a man who went to a new bride before the body of his wife was cold?

Along the river came the dismal booming of the gun. He heard it; his mouth twisted into a line of mingling joy and apprehension.

“The deed is done!” he cried. “Uncouple the hounds and away!”

So he rode on, on to Wolf Hall, on to marriage with Jane Seymour.