Philippa Gregory - The Boleyn Inheritance

I hesitate; like a fool I wait for a few days, hoping that it is not as bad as it seems. I think that the king might be well advised by men who can see reason. I pray that God might speak to him in words of common sense and not reassure him that his own desires should be paramount. I hope that I might hear from my mother, to tell me what I should do. I even hope against hope for a message from my brother saying that he will not let them try me, that he will prevent my execution, that he is sending an escort to bring me home. Then, on the very day that Dr. Harst said he would come with six horses and I should be ready to leave, he comes to me, without horses, his face very grave, and says that the ports are closed. The king is letting no one in or out of the country. No ships are allowed to sail at all. Even if we could get to the coast – and to run away would be a confession of guilt – we would not be able to sail. I am imprisoned in my new country. There is no way of getting home.

Like a fool I had thought that my difficulty would be getting past the guards at my door, getting horses, getting away from the palace without someone raising a hue and cry and coming after us. But no, the king is all-seeing, like the god he thinks he is. Getting away from the palace would have been hard enough, but now we cannot take a ship for home. I am marooned on this island. The king holds me captive.

Dr. Harst thinks this means that they will come for me at once. The king has closed the whole country so that he can have me tried, found guilty, and beheaded before my own family can even hear of my arrest. No one in Europe can protest or cry shame! No one in Europe will even know until it is over and I am dead. I believe this to be true. It must be within a few days, perhaps even tomorrow.

I cannot sleep. I spend the night at the window watching for the first light of dawn. I think this will be my last night on earth, and I regret more than anything else that I have wasted my life. I spent all my time obeying my father and then my brother; I squandered these last months in trying to please the king; I did not treasure the little spark that is me, uniquely me. Instead, I put my will and my thoughts beneath the will of the men who command me. If I had been the gyrfalcon that my father called me, I would have flown high, and nested in lonely, cold places, and ridden the free wind. Instead, I have been like a bird in a mews, always tied and sometimes hooded. Never free and sometimes blind.

As God is my witness, if I live through this night, through this week, I shall try to be true to myself in the future. If God spares me I shall try to honor him by being me, myself; not by being a sister or a daughter or a wife. This is an easy promise to make for I don’t think I will be held to it. I don’t think God will save me, I don’t think Henry will spare me. I don’t think I will have any life beyond next week.

As it grows light and then golden with the morning sun of summertime, I stay at my seat at the window, and they bring me a cup of small ale and a slice of bread and butter as I watch the river for the flutter of the standard and the steady dip and sweep of oars, for the coming of the royal barge to take me to the Tower. Any beat of a drum, drifting over the water to keep the rowers in time, and I can hear my heart echoing its thudding in my ears, thinking that it is them, come for me today. Funny then that when they finally come, not until midafternoon, it is not a troop but only a single man, Richard Beard, who arrives without warning in a little wherry, when I am walking in the garden, my hands cold in my pockets and my feet clumsy with fear. He finds me in the privy garden when I am walking among the roses, bending my head down to the blooms but unable to smell the perfume of the full-blown flowers. From a distance I must look to him like a happy woman, a young queen in a garden of roses. Only as he comes close does he see the whiteness of my blank face.

“Your Grace,” he says, and bows low, as if to a queen.

I nod.

“I have brought a letter from the king.” He offers me the letter.

I take it, but I do not break the seal. “What does it say?” I ask.

He does not pretend that it is a private matter. “It is to tell you that after months of doubt the king has decided to examine his marriage to you. He fears that it is not valid because you were already contracted to marry. There is to be an inquiry.”

“He says we are not married?” I ask.

“He fears that you were not married,” he corrects me gently.

I shake my head. “I don’t understand,” I say stupidly. “I don’t understand.”

They all come then: half the Privy Council arrive with their entourage and servants; they all come to tell me that I must agree to an inquiry. I don’t agree. I won’t agree. They are all to stay the night here with me at Richmond Palace. I won’t dine with them; I shall not agree. I shall never agree.

In the morning they tell me that three of my ladies are to be summoned to appear before the inquiry. They refuse to tell me what they will be asked; they will not even tell me who will be made to go and testify against me. I ask them for copies of the documents that are to be the evidence laid before the inquiry, and they refuse to let me see anything. Dr. Harst complains of this treatment and writes to my brother, but we know that the letters will never get through until it is too late; the ports are sealed and there is no news leaving England at all. We are alone. I am alone. Dr. Harst tells me that before her trial, there was an inquiry into Anne Boleyn’s conduct. An inquiry: just as they will make into my conduct. The ladies of her chamber were questioned as to what she had said and done, just as mine will be. The evidence from that inquiry was used at her trial. The sentence was passed against her, and the king married Jane Seymour, her maid-in-waiting, within the month. They will not even hold a trial for me, it will be done on the king’s signature: nothing more. Am I really going to die so that the king can marry little Kitty Howard? Can it really be possible that I am to die so that this old man can marry a girl whom he could bed for little more than the price of a gown?

We come into the city of London by royal barge from Richmond; it is all done very fine for us, the king is sparing no trouble to make sure we are comfortable. There are three of us, Lady Rutland, Catherine Edgecombe, and myself: three little Judases come to do our duty. With us, as escort, is Lord Southampton, who must feel he has some ground to regain with the king since he welcomed Anne of Cleves into England and said that she was pretty and merry and queenly. With him are Lord Audley and the Duke of Suffolk, eager to play their parts and curry favor. They will give their evidence against her to the inquiry after we have given ours.

Catherine Edgecombe is nervous. She says she does not know what she is to say, she is afraid of one of the churchmen cross-questioning her and trapping her into saying the wrong thing; heavens, even the truth might slip out if she were to be harried – how dreadful would that be! But I am as much at ease as a bitter old fishwife gutting mackerel. “You won’t even see them,” I predict. “You won’t be cross-questioned. Who would challenge your lies? It’s not as if there will be anyone wanting the truth; it’s not as if there will be anyone speaking in her defense. I imagine you won’t even have to speak. It will all be drawn up for us, we’ll just have to sign it.”

“But what if it says… what if they name her as a…” She breaks off and looks downriver. She is too afraid even to say the word witch.

“Why would you even read it?” I ask. “What does it matter what it says above your signature? You agreed to sign it, didn’t you? You didn’t agree to read it.”

“But I would not have her harmed by my evidence,” she says, the ninny.

I raise my eyebrows, but I say nothing. I don’t need to. We all know that we have set out in the king’s barge, on a lovely summer day, to be rowed up the river to destroy a young woman who has done nothing wrong.

“Did you just sign something? When you? Before?” she asks tentatively.

“No,” I say. There is a salt taste of bile in my mouth so strong that I want to spit over the side into the green, swift water. “No. It was not done as well as this for Anne and my husband. See how we are improving in these ceremonies? Then, I had to go into court before them all and swear on the Bible and give my evidence. I had to face the court and say what I had to say against my own husband and his sister. I had to face him and say it.”

She gives a little shudder. “That must have been dreadful.”

“It was,” I say shortly.

“You must have feared the worst.”

“I knew that my life would be saved,” I say crudely. “And I imagine that is why you are here today, as I am, as is Lady Rutland. If Anne of Cleves is found guilty and dies, then at least we will not die with her.”

“But what will they say she has done?” Catherine asks.

“Oh, it will be us who say.” I give a harsh laugh. “It will be us who accuse her. It will be us who make the accusation and swear to the evidence. It will be us who will say what she has done. They will just say that she will have to die for it. And we will find out her crime soon enough.”

Thank God, thank God, I have to sign nothing that blames her for the king’s impotence. I don’t have to give evidence that she cast a spell on him or bewitched him, or lay with half a dozen men, or gave birth in secret to a monster. This time, I have to say nothing like that. We all sign the same statement, which says only that she told us that she lay down with him every night as a maid and rose every morning as a maid, and that from what she said to us it was clear that she is such a fool that she never knew that there was anything wrong. We are supposed to have advised her that to be a wife required more than a kiss good night and a blessing in the morning; we are supposed to have said that she wouldn’t get a son this way; and she is supposed to have said that she was content to know no more. All this chatter is supposed to have taken place in her room between the four of us, conducted in fluent English without a moment’s hesitation and no interpreter.