The Boleyn Inheritance

Jane Boleyn, the Tower of London,
February 1542

I laugh, I skip about, sometimes I look out of the window and talk to the seagulls. There is to be no trial, no questioning, no chance to clear my name, so there is no advantage to having my wits about me. They do not dare put that idiot Katherine before a court, or she has refused to go; I don’t know which, and I don’t care. All I know is what they tell me. They speak very loudly to me, as if I were deaf or old, rather than mad. They say that parliament has passed an act of attainder against Katherine and against me for treason and conspiracy. We have been judged and found guilty without trial, without judge or jury or defense. This is Henry’s justice. I look blank and giggle, I sing a little song and ask when we shall go hunting. It can’t be long now. In a few days I expect them to fetch Katherine from Syon and then they will behead her.

They send the king’s own doctor, Dr. Butt, to see me. He comes every day and sits in a chair in the center of my room and watches me from under thick eyebrows as if I were one of the beasts. He is to judge if I am mad. This makes me laugh out loud without pretense. If this doctor knew when someone was mad, he would have locked up the king six years ago, before he murdered my husband. I curtsy to the good doctor, and dance around him, and laugh at his questioning when he asks me for my name and for my family. I am absolutely convincing; I can see it in his pitying gaze. Undoubtedly he will report to the king that I am out of my wits, and they will have to release me.

Listen! Listen! I hear it! The noise of saws and hammers. I peep out of the window and I clap my hands as if delighted to see the workmen building the scaffold: Katherine’s scaffold. They will behead her under my window. If I dare, I can watch it all happen. I shall have the best view of everyone. When she is dead, they will send me away, probably to my family at Blickling, and then I can quietly and secretly grow sane again. I shall take my time; I want no one inquiring after me. I shall dance about for a year or two, singing songs and talking to clouds, and at the end of it, when the new king, King Edward, is on the throne and the old scores forgotten I shall return to court and serve the new queen as well as I can.

Oh! There’s a plank gone down with a clatter and a young man cuffed for carelessness. I shall set up a cushion on the window ledge and watch them all day; it is as good as a masque at court to see them measuring and sawing and building. What a fuss to make about building such a stage when the show will last for only a few minutes! When they bring me my dinner, I clap my hands and point, and the warders shake their heads and put down the dishes and go quietly away.