The Boleyn Inheritance

Anne, Westminster Palace,
June 1540

My brother has finally sent the documents that show that indeed I was never married before I came to England, that my marriage to the king was my first wedding, and it is valid, as I know, as everybody knows. The documents arrived by messenger today, but my ambassador cannot present them. The king’s Privy Council is in almost constant meeting, and we cannot find out what they are discussing. Having insisted on having this document, they now cannot be troubled even to see it; and what this new indifference means I cannot guess.

God knows what they are planning to do with me; my horror is that they will accuse me of something shameful and I will die in this distant land, and my mother will believe that her daughter died a whore.

I know that terrible trouble is brewing because of the danger that has come to my friends. Lord Lisle, who welcomed me so kindly to Calais, has been arrested and no one can tell me the charges he faces. His wife has disappeared from my rooms, without saying good-bye. She did not come to ask me to intercede for him. This must mean either that he is to die without trial – dear God, perhaps he is dead already – or that she knows I have no influence with the king. Either way this is a disaster for him and for me. Nobody can tell me where Lady Lisle is hiding, and, in truth, I am afraid to ask. If her husband is charged with treason, then any suggestion that he was a friend of mine will count against me.

Their daughter, Anne Bassett, is still in my service, but she claims that she is ill and has taken to her bed. I wanted to see her, but Lady Rochford says that it is safer for the girl if she is allowed to be alone. So her bedroom door is shut, and the shutters in her room are closed. Whether she is a danger to me or I am to her, I dare not ask.

I have sent for Thomas Cromwell who, at least, is blessed with the king’s favor since he was made Earl of Essex only a few weeks ago. Thomas Cromwell at least must stand my friend while my women whisper behind their hands and everyone at court is poised for disaster. But my lord Cromwell has, so far, sent me no reply. Someone surely must tell me what is happening.

I wish we were back at Hampton Court. It is hot today, and I feel cooped up, like a gyrfalcon in a crowded mews, a white falcon, hardly of this world: a bird as white as the winter snows and born to be free in the cold, wild places. I could wish myself back at Calais or even Dover when the road ahead of me lay to London and to my future as Queen of England, and I was full of hope. I could wish myself almost anywhere but here, looking through the little leaded window panes to a bright blue sky, wondering why my friend Lord Lisle is in the Tower of London, and why my supporter Thomas Cromwell does not reply to my urgent request that he come to me at once. Surely he can come and tell me why the council has been meeting in all but secret for days? Surely he will come and tell me why Lady Lisle has disappeared and why her husband is under arrest? Surely he will come soon?

The door opens and I start up, expecting him; but it is not Cromwell, nor his man, but little Katherine Howard, her face wan and her eyes tragic. She has her traveling cape over her arm, and as soon as I see it I feel a wave of nausea from sheer terror. Little Kitty has been arrested; she, too, has been charged with some crime. Quickly I go to her and take her hands.

“Kitty? What is it? What is the charge?”

“I’m safe,” she gasps. “It’s all right. I am safe. I am just to go home to my grandmother, for a while.”

“But why? What do they say you have done?”

Her little face is twisted with distress. “I am not to be your maid-in-waiting anymore.”

“You are not?”

“No. I have come to say good-bye.”

“What have you done?” I cry out. Surely this girl, not much more than a child, cannot have committed any crime? The worst thing that Katherine Howard is capable of is vanity and flirtation, and this is not a court that punishes such sins. “I will not let them take you away. I defend you. I know you are good girl. What do they say against you?”

“I have done nothing,” she says. “But they tell me it is better for me to be away from court while all this is happening.”

“All what? Oh, Kitty, tell me quickly, what you know?”

She beckons me, and I bend down so that she can whisper in my ear. “Anne, Your Grace I mean, dearest queen. Thomas Cromwell has been arrested for treason.”

“Treason? Cromwell?”

“Ssh. Yes.”

“What has he done?”

“He conspired with Lord Lisle and the Papists to put the king under an enchantment.”

My mind is spinning, and I don’t fully understand what she is saying. “A what? What is that?”

“Thomas Cromwell made a spell,” she says.

When she sees I still do not understand the word, she gently takes my face and draws it down so that she can whisper in my ear again. “Thomas Cromwell employed a witch,” she says softly, without any inflection. “Thomas Cromwell hired a witch to destroy His Majesty the king.”

She leans back to see if I understand her now, and the horror in my face tells her that I do.

“They know this for true?”

She nods.

“Who is the witch?” I breathe. “What has she done?”

“She has put the king under a spell so he is unmanned,” she says. “She has cursed the king so that he shall not have a son by you.”

“Who is the witch?” I demand. “Who is Thomas Cromwell’s witch? Who has unmanned the king? Who do they say she is?” Katherine’s little face is pinched with fear. “Anne, Your Grace, my dearest queen, what if they say it is you?”

I live almost withdrawn from the world, emerging from my rooms only to dine before the court, where I try to appear serene, or, better still, innocent. They are questioning Thomas Cromwell, and the arrests go on; other men are accused of treason against the king, accused of employing a witch to blight his manhood. There is a network of plotters unfolding. Lord Lisle is said to have been the focus in Calais; he aided the Papists and the Pole family who have long wanted to recapture the throne from the Tudors. His second in command at the fortress has fled to Rome to serve under Cardinal Pole, which proves the guilt. They say that Lord Lisle and his party have worked with a witch to make sure that the king should not have a fruitful marriage with me, shall not make another heir to his reformed religion. But at the same time, it is said that Thomas Cromwell was aiding the Lutherans, the reformers, the evangelicals. It is said he brought me in to marry the king and ordered a witch to unman the king so that he could put his own line on the throne. But who is the witch? the court asks itself. Who is the witch who was friends with Lord Lisle, and was brought to England by Thomas Cromwell? Who is the witch? What woman is indicated by both of these nightmares of evil? Ask it again: what woman was brought to England by Thomas Cromwell, but is friends with Lord Lisle?

Clearly, there is only one woman.

Only one woman, brought to England by Thomas Cromwell, befriended by Lord Lisle, unmanning the king so that he was impotent on the night of his wedding and every night thereafter.

No one has named the witch yet; they are gathering evidence.

Princess Mary’s departure has been brought forward, and I have only a moment with her as we wait for them to bring the horses round from the stables.

“You know I am innocent of any wrongdoing,” I say to her under cover of the noise of the servants running around and her guards calling for their horses. “Whatever you hear in the future about me, please believe me: I am innocent.”

“Of course,” she says levelly. She does not look at me. She is Henry’s daughter; she has served a long apprenticeship in learning not to betray herself. “I shall pray for you every day. I shall pray that they all see your innocence as I do.”

“I am certain that Lord Lisle is innocent, too,” I say.

“Without doubt,” she replies in the same abrupt way.

“Can I save him? Can you?”

“No.”

“Princess Mary, on your faith, can nothing be done?”

She risks a sideways glance at me. “Dearest Anne, nothing. There is nothing to do but to keep our own counsel and pray for better times.”

“Will you tell me something?”

She looks around and sees that her horses have not yet come. She takes my arm and we walk a little way toward the stable yard as if we are looking to see how long they will be. “What is it?”

“Who is this Pole family? And why does the king fear the Papists when he defeated them so long ago?”

“The Poles are the Plantagenet family, of the House of York, some would say the true heirs to the throne of England,” she says. “Lady Margaret Pole was my mother’s truest friend; she was as a mother to me, she is utterly loyal to the throne. The king has her in the Tower now, with all of her family that he could capture. They are accused of treason, but everyone knows they have committed no offense but being of Plantagenet blood. The king is so fearful for his throne that I think he will not allow this family to live. Lady Margaret’s two grandsons, two little boys, are in the Tower also, God help them. She, my dearest Lady Margaret, she will not be allowed to live. Others of the family are in exile; they can never come home.”

“They are Papists?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “They are. One of them, Reginald, is a cardinal. Some would say they are the true kings of the true faith of England. But that would be treason, and you would be put to death for saying it.”

“And why does the king fear the Papists so much? I thought England was converted to the reformed faith? I thought the Papists were defeated?”

Princess Mary shakes her head. “No. I should think fewer than half the people welcome the changes, and many wish for the old ways back again. When the king denied the authority of the Pope and destroyed the monasteries, there was a great rising of men in the north of the country, determined to defend the church and the holy houses. They called it the Pilgrimage of Grace, and they marched under the banner of the five wounds of Jesus Christ. The king sent the hardest man in the kingdom against them at the head of the army, and he feared them so badly that he called for a parley, spoke with sweet words, and promised them a pardon and a parliament.”

“Who was that?” Already I know.

“Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.”

“And the pardon?”

“As soon as the army had disbanded, he beheaded the leaders and hanged the followers.” She speaks with as little inflection as if she is complaining that the luggage wagon is badly packed. “He promised a parliament and a pardon on the king’s sacred word. He gave his own word, too, on his honor. It meant nothing.”

“They are defeated?”

“Well, he hanged seventy monks from the roof timbers of their own abbey,” she says bitterly. “So they won’t defy him again. But no, I believe the true faith will never be defeated.”

She turns us so that we are strolling back to the door again. She smiles and nods at someone who calls “Safe journey” to her, but I cannot smile, too.

“The king fears his own people,” she says. “He fears rivals. He even fears me. He is my father, and yet sometimes I think he has gone half mad with mistrust. Any fear he has, however foolish, is real to him. If he so much as dreams that Lord Lisle has betrayed him, then Lord Lisle is a dead man. If someone suggests that his troubles with you are part of a plot, then you are in the gravest of danger. If you can get away, you should do. He cannot tell fear from truth. He cannot tell nightmares from reality.”

“I am Queen of England,” I say. “They cannot accuse me of witchcraft.”

She turns to face me for the first time. “That won’t save you,” she says. “It didn’t save Anne Boleyn. They accused her of witchcraft and they found the evidence and they found her guilty. She was as much queen as you.” She suddenly laughs as if I have said something funny, and I see that some of my ladies have come out of the hall and are watching us. I laugh, too, but I am sure anyone could hear the fear in my voice. She takes my arm. “If anyone asks me what we were talking about when we walked out and back to the steps again, I shall say that I was complaining that I would be late, and I was afraid of being tired.”

“Yes,” I agree, but I am so frightened that I am shaking as if I were chilled with cold. “I shall say you were looking to see when they would be ready.”

Princess Mary presses my arm. “My father has changed the laws of this land,” she says. “It is now a crime of treason, punishable by death, even to think ill of the king. You don’t have to say anything; you don’t have to do anything. Your own secret thoughts are treason now.”

“I am queen,” I maintain stubbornly.

“Listen,” she says bluntly. “He has changed the process of justice, too. You don’t have to be condemned by a court. You can be condemned to death on a Bill of Attainder. That is nothing more than the king’s order, supported by his parliament. And they never refuse to support him. Queen or beggar, if the king wants you dead, he just has to order it now. He does not even have to sign the warrant for an execution, he only has to use a seal.”

I find I am clenching my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. “What do you think I should do?”

“Get away,” she says. “Get away before he comes for you.”

After she has gone I feel as if my last friend has left court. I go back to my rooms and my ladies set up a table of cards. I let them start to play, and then I summon my ambassador and take him into the window bay, where we cannot be overheard, to ask him if anyone has questioned him about me. He says they have not; he is ignored by everyone, isolated as if he were carrying the plague. I ask him if he could hire or buy two fast horses and keep them outside the castle walls in case of my sudden need. He says he has no money to hire or buy horses, and in any case the king has guards on my doors night and day. The men who I thought were there to keep me safe, to open the doors to my presence chamber, to announce my guests, are now my jailers.

I am very afraid. I try to pray, but even the words of the prayers are a trap. I cannot appear as if I am becoming a Papist, a Papist like Lord Lisle is now said to be; and yet I must not appear to have held to my brother’s religion; the Lutherans are suspected of being part of Cromwell’s plot to ruin the king.

When I see the king, I try to behave pleasantly and calmly before him. I dare not challenge him, nor even protest my innocence. Most frightening of all is his manner to me, which is now warm and friendly, as if we were acquaintances about to part after a short journey together. He behaves as if our time together has been an enjoyable interlude that is now naturally drawing to a close.

He will not say good-bye to me, I know that. Princess Mary has warned me of that. There is no point waiting for the moment when he tells me that I am to face an accusation. I know that one of these evenings when I rise from the dinner table and curtsy to him and he kisses my hand so courteously will be the last time I ever see him. I may walk from the hall with my ladies following me to find my rooms filled with soldiers and my clothes already packed, my jewels returned to the treasury. It is a short journey from the palace of Westminster to the Tower; they will take me by river in the darkness and I will go in by the watergate, and I will leave by the block on Tower Green.

The ambassador has written to my brother to say that I am desperately frightened, but I do not hope for a reply. William will not mind my being sick with fear, and by the time they learn of the charges against me it will be too late to save me. And perhaps William would not even choose to save me. He has allowed this peril to come about. He must have hated me more than I ever knew.

If anyone is to save me, it will have to be me, myself. But how can a woman save herself against the charge of witchcraft? If Henry tells the world that he is impotent because I have unmanned him, how can I prove differently? If he tells the world that he can lie with Katherine Howard but not with me, then his case is proved and my denial is just another instance of satanic cunning. A woman cannot prove her innocence when a man bears witness against her. If Henry wants me strangled as a witch, then nothing can save me. He claimed that Lady Anne Boleyn was a witch, and she died for it. He never said good-bye to her, and he had loved her with a passion. They just came for her one day and took her away.

I am waiting now, for them to come for me.