Ambition's Queen: A Novel of Tudor England (32 page)

Brereton died with one stroke and his corpse was added to the pile. “Is it over yet?” Anne called from across the room, where she still sat upon the floor, the bowl in her lap.

“No, madam,” Bridget replied flatly. “Master Smeaton is still to come”

As she said the words, the small figure of Mark Smeaton duly appeared. The pool of blood that had formed when Rochford’s head fell had turned grown so large that Smeaton nearly lost his footing as he staggered through it. He pushed his thick, yellow hair out of his eyes and looked about him with understandable trepidation. He shook as his spoke, and Bridget thought back to the day he had sung for them in the queen’s chamber at Greenwich. His voice had been pure and true and hauntingly sad. He laid his trembling head upon the scarlet block and his golden voice was silenced for good.

Bridget bowed her head and asked God to take the men to his mercy. Then she walked away from the window, on watery legs, and said, “Now it is over, madam.”

Within an hour of overseeing the carnage on Tower Hill, a grim-faced Sir William Kingston came to the queen and informed her of her fate. “Madam, you are to die on the morrow. His Majesty the king, in his infinite goodness, has decided that you are not to be burnt but to be beheaded by the sword, in the French fashion.”

Anne’s eyebrows darted upwards at the news of the sword but otherwise she showed no reaction to the ghastly announcement. “I thank you, sir, and I am grateful to His Majesty that I am not to suffer the agony of the flames. Tell me, Master Kingston, what did my brother and the others say upon the scaffold? Did they declare my innocence?”

“The men,” Kingston faltered a little, “died very charitably, all having confessed to being sinners, but only Mark confessed his guilt and said that he deserved to die.”

Anne exploded with anger. “He did not clear my name? Then I fear for his soul and I have no doubt that the Lord will punish him for his false accusations! But as for my brother,” she sighed, “and the others, I know that they are now before the great King before whom I appear tomorrow.”

The queen spent the rest of the day and night in prayer, joined by her ladies, eschewing all offers of food and drink. In the very early hours John Skip, her almoner, the man who had so foolishly preached the sermon comparing Cromwell to the evil counsellor Haman, arrived to pray with his mistress. Thus they continued until Thomas Cranmer, at about six o’clock, came to hear the queen’s confession and to give her Holy Communion.

Anne asked Lay Lee to summon Kingston to hear her confession and insisted that all her ladies be present as well. The queen took the sacrament with great reverence and then declared in a steady voice, “I am innocent of the charges against me. I have never offended with my body against His Majesty the King.”

Sir William and Lady Kingston looked at each other and Cranmer had tears in his eyes, whether from grief at the imminent death of his former patroness, or from guilt at the deception he had played upon her, Bridget could not tell.

He departed and all they could do was wait. Anne had chosen to wear a beautiful gown of grey damask, trimmed with ermine, with a crimson kirtle, the colour of martyrdom, showing underneath. The four ladies dressed the queen carefully and Bridget arranged her hair for the last time, combing out her long, dark brown locks and deftly pinning them up before the English style gable hood was placed over the top.

All was nearly in readiness when a dismayed Lady Kingston entered the chamber and said, “I am sorry, madam, but the execution has been delayed . . . it shall not take place before noon.” Anne looked at her confusedly and asked Lady Kingston to fetch her husband. She scurried away, and in the interim before the constable arrived, Anne’s composure began to slip.

She took the gable hoof off and said almost to herself, “I was prepared! Why does he torture me so?” And then she laughed.

Bridget recognised the old hysteria of her first days in the Tower reasserting itself. She hastened to the queen’s side. “Sit down, madam, everything is all right. Sir William will soon explain things.”

Kingston knocked once and walked in and Bridget knew, with a sinking heart, that the queen’s torture would be prolonged yet further. “Master Kingston,” Anne exclaimed, “I hear that I shall not die before noon and I am very sorry, for I thought to be past my pain by then.”

“Oh no, madam,” Kingston soothed, “there will be no pain, the blow will be so subtle.”

Anne nodded. “I have heard that the executioner is very good and I have a little neck.” She laughed, shrilly, and put both her hands around her neck and squeezed. Kingston looked horrified and quickly took his leave. He returned a little later and told the queen that she must wait until night. Her death, without a doubt, would take place tomorrow.

Afternoon slowly turned to evening and, by some miracle, Joanna, Catherine, and Lady Lee had fallen asleep. None of them had slept very much in the last few days and tiredness had finally overtaken the three ladies. Anne did not sleep. She was still dressed in her grey damask, a jewelled cross hanging heavily about her neck, the leaping flames from the great fireplace reflected in its depths.

“What do you think they will call me?”

Bridget startled a little, unsure of the meaning of the question. “Call you, madam?”

“Yes, Bridget, an infamous queen always has a nickname, like ‘Catherine the Good’ or ‘Mary the Mad.’ I wonder what they will come up with for me—perhaps
La Royne Anne sans tete
? Queen Anne Lack Head!”

She laughed, the sound bouncing hollowly off the walls of the chamber. Anne ran her hand up and down her neck, so slim and narrow, and her black eyes filled with tears. “The king used to call me his midnight swan. Some people liked to call me the midnight crow you see, it was a favourite term old Wolsey used to employ, and Henry knew that I despised it. So, to make me feel better, he called me his midnight swan. He said that with my dark hair and my dark eyes and my long neck that I more resembled a swan than a crow. Now, he wants someone to slice my neck in two.”

Anne got up and walked over to the window. The moonlight bathed her in an ethereal glow and caught the new streaks of silver in her hair. “He loved me so much. Not with the love of a young boy, which is what he felt for Catherine, or this muted, insipid, imitation of love that he seems to feel for Jane Seymour, but real, passionate, all-consuming love. The kind you imperil your kingdom and defy the Pope for. The kind of love that changes the world. And it did. We did. But now all that is gone and he would kill me. Why?”

Anne stared into the darkness, her eyes searching the green outside and beyond, where her scaffold lay. “Does the king actually believe that I have lain with others? I loved him, he knows that, I would never have lain with anyone else. Besides, he knows that a queen is never alone, she is watched constantly. How could I have contrived to have five lovers for so long without anyone knowing? It is absurd. He cannot believe it. He kills me for other reasons, he must do.”

“What about the testimony of Lady Worcester and Lady Rochford, madam? Perhaps their treachery convinced him.”

Anne leant against the window embrasure and ran her hand slowly down the stonework. “I pray for those ladies. They shall surely suffer for their lies. But for the king to accept their word, without questioning me, is ludicrous! Besides, what did they actually say? That I danced and laughed and flirted with courtiers? Many queens have done so and they did not find themselves facing execution.”

“Lady Rochford said more than that, Majesty,” Bridget ventured. “She was filled with resentment against you and Lord Rochford, and once she showed me your brother in an . . . embrace with Mark Smeaton. She believed that a great intimacy existed between yourself and her husband. Her words gave Cromwell the opening he needed.”

“Poor Jane,” Anne said quietly. “Looking back, George should never have married her; they were not suited, but she comes from a good family and Father wanted the match. They were never happy. She always hated me; she especially hated the bond between George and me, because she could never get near him. I loved my brother, but he was not a good husband. He was too wild, too . . . loose with his affections.” Anne smiled wryly before darkness spread over her face. “But for all that he did not deserve to die. Not like that.”

Bridget shuddered at the image of George Boleyn on the scaffold, the axe falling and falling. Anne did not know the full extent of how horribly he had died and Bridget saw no reason now to enlighten her. “No, it was not the tales of those two ladies that turned the king against me. It must have been Cromwell and the loss of our boy in the winter. Henry wants a son so much, he needs one so badly, and I had promised to give him one. And I did. Once.”

She turned towards Bridget and laughed at the puzzled expression she saw there. “Oh yes, it is true. It happened two years ago and the whole thing was hushed up because the king was so embarrassed about it. After I had Elizabeth I became pregnant again very quickly and gave birth to a baby boy on a summer’s day. He took one solitary breath of life. He was beautiful. I remember his fingers—long and elegant like mine, though no sixth fingernail of course! Tragically, he was small and born too early and he could not survive. I held him for a long time after he died, till he grew cold in my arms. Henry felt humiliated and angry at another lost son. He wanted him forgotten and so he was. Forgotten by the world, but not by me.”

Anne sighed and played with the cross that hung around her neck. “Since his death, I was not able to carry another baby, and it was not always easy to conceive one. The king could not always perform. He started to draw away from me and look at other women. And then I made an error. I misjudged Thomas Cromwell.” Her voice hardened.

“I thought that we were allies, that we wanted the same things. He was ‘my man,’ after all. I then learned that Thomas Cromwell works only for his own interests. I did not want all of the religious houses dissolved. He does, and no doubt they will be. I wanted some to be converted to better uses, for educational purposes, for example. Cromwell is not interested in that. He merely wants their money to fill the king’s coffers and to buy loyalty with the monastic lands he will take. I saw what was happening and I reacted, I admit, foolishly—I threatened him and I had Skip preach that sermon. I thought that I was being clever and that the king would take my side once his eyes had been opened. But they were not and he did not.”

Bridget silently agreed that the sermon had been a terrible mistake. Cromwell was not a man who would take any threat to his position lightly, let alone one from the queen, a woman with the power to place him upon a scaffold. Therefore, he determined to place her upon one first. He certainly had not flinched from the task.

“I lost the king’s confidence and I could not reach him again. Then everything happened so fast, I could barely draw breath. I had that stupid argument with Norris, the king left me on May Day, and before I knew what was afoot I was arrested and taken here, my brother as well, and now he is dead, they’re all dead, and I am to follow. Unless of course, Henry only does these things to test me.”

Bridget looked at her mistress in astonishment. Anne still held on to the hope that Henry would not execute her. “Majesty, I do not think that the king is testing you. If that was so, he would surely not have gone as far as this. He has executed five men on your account. Men who were his friends.”

“I know he has, but to kill me?” Anne argued. “I am still queen, and I will always be the mother of his daughter. Executing one such as I has never happened in England. He may divorce me, discard me, and send me away, but to spill my blood? No, there is still a chance for exile, for the nunnery. I have not given up entirely. After all, there has been a delay. Perhaps this is not meant to happen.”

Bridget turned her face away to hide the stricken expression upon it. The queen still harboured hopes of reprieve when all chance of that had gone. She did not have the heart to try and persuade her otherwise. Let her dream, for one more night.

Anne fell into a long silence. After a time, she shivered and drew her fur-lined robe more closely about her slight shoulders. “Madam,” Bridget said, “come and sit by the fire. You are cold.”

Anne nodded and seated herself as near as possible to the flames, the better to warm her frozen hands. Once the colour returned to her cheeks she said, “If I am not saved tomorrow, what shall you do, Bridget? Where will you go?”

Bridget considered her answer for a moment. “I will go back to the abbess with Joanna. There is a home for me there and I have a little money for my upkeep. Beyond that, I do not know.”

Anne leant forward. “I want you to stay at court, Bridget. There is no future for you stuck in the country somewhere with your abbess. The court is the centre of the world. You could go far there.”

The old light of ambition flared in Anne’s eyes and Bridget realised that nothing, not even imprisonment and the threat of death, would ever be enough to extinguish it. She should not have been surprised. Everyone was driven by the lust for advancement, for privilege and position, for power. High born and low, nobles and new men, Norfolk and Wiltshire and Cromwell. Will too, she thought sadly. Above all it drove Anne—she was Ambition’s Queen, and it consumed her in its dark fire.
But it will not consume me,
Bridget vowed. If she stayed at court, if such a course of action were possible, she would have to let it claim her, she would have to become both a creature and a servant of ambition, in order to survive. She did not relish the prospect of such a fate.

“Madam, the abbess has always been very good to me; life with her will be no hardship. Besides, what future could there be for me at court? The king and the Seymours will not want anyone with even a slight Boleyn connection around them. There will be no place for me there.”

“Oh nonsense!” Anne disagreed loudly. “You are a pretty, young girl, which is half the battle at court. Your link with me will be discreetly forgotten. In any case, are you not going to marry Will Redcliff? Cromwell will put in a good word for you and he is a powerful man.” Anne’s features dimmed as she saw Bridget’s reaction. “You are not certain that you want Master Redcliff? Perhaps that is wise, there may be other opportunities for you. Just do not dismiss the possibility. I do not want you wasting your life and that is what a life with the abbess would be for you. A waste. In any case, that is all for the future. In the meantime, I have something for you.”