I wake at dawn in these light mornings and I hear the birds singing outside my window and watch the sunlight slowly walk across the wall. Thomas Philips, the warder, surprises me by knocking on my door, and when I have got up and pulled a robe over my nightgown, he comes in looking as if he is sick. “What’s the matter?” I ask him, anxious at once. “Is my grandson ill?”
“He is well, he is well,” he says hastily.
“Edward then?”
“He is well.”
“Then what is the matter, Mr. Philips, for you look troubled. What is wrong?”
“I am grieved,” is all that he can say. He turns his head away and shakes his head and clears his throat. Something is distressing him so much that he can barely speak. “I am grieved to say that you are to be executed.”
“I?” It is quite impossible. The execution of Anne Boleyn was preceded by a trial in which the peers of the realm were convinced that she was an adulterous witch. A noblewoman, one of the royal family, cannot be executed, not without a charge, not without a trial.
“Yes.”
I go to the low window that overlooks the green and look out. “It cannot be,” I say. “It cannot be.”
Philips clears this throat again. “It is commanded.”
“There’s no scaffold,” I say simply. I gesture to Tower Hill, beyond the walls. “There’s no scaffold.”
“They’re bringing a block,” he says. “Putting it on the grass.”
I turn and stare at him. “A block? They’re going to put a block on the grass and behead me in hiding?”
He nods.
“There’s no charge, there’s no trial. There’s no scaffold. The man who accused me is dead himself, accused of treason. It cannot be.”
“It is,” he says. “I beg you to prepare your soul, your ladyship.”
“When?” I ask. I expect him to say the day after tomorrow, or at the end of the week.
He says: “At seven of the clock. In an hour and a half,” and he goes from the room, his head down.
I cannot comprehend that I have only an hour and a half left of life. The chaplain comes and hears my confession, and I beg him to go at once to the boys and give them my blessing and my love and to tell them to stay away from the windows that face the green and the little block that has been set there. A few people have gathered; I see the chain of the Lord Mayor of London, but it is early in the morning and all unprepared, and so only a few people have been told and only a few have come.
This makes it even worse, I think. The king must have decided it on a whim, perhaps as late as last night, and they must have sent out the order this morning. And nobody has dissuaded him. Of all my numerous fertile family, there was nobody left who could dissuade him.
I try to pray, but my mind skitters around like a foal in a meadow in springtime. I have ordered in my will that my debts should be paid and prayers said for my soul and that I should be buried in my old priory. But I doubt that they will trouble themselves to take my body—I suddenly remember with surprise that my head will be in a basket—all the way to my old chapel. So perhaps I will lie in the Tower chapel with my son, Montague. This comforts me until I remember his son, my grandson Harry, and I wonder who will care for him, and if he will ever be released, or if he will die here, another Plantagenet boy buried in the Tower.
I think all this while my lady-in-waiting dresses me, puts my new cape over my shoulders, and ties up my hair under my hood so as to leave my neck clear for the axe.
“It’s not right,” I say irritably, as if the ties of the dress are wrong, and she drops to her knees and cries, mopping her eyes with the hem of my gown.
“It’s wicked!” she cries out.
“Hush,” I say. I feel I cannot be troubled by her sorrow, I cannot understand it. I feel dazed, as if I cannot understand her words nor what is about to happen.
The priest is waiting at the door and the guard. Everything seems to be happening very quickly and I fear I am not prepared. I think, of course, it may be that just as I get to the grass, a pardon comes from the king. It would be typical of his sense of a grand show to condemn a woman to death after dinner and pardon her before breakfast so that everyone can remark on his power and his mercy.
I dawdle down the stairs, with my lady-in-waiting’s arm under mine, not just because my legs are stiff and unaccustomed to the exercise, but because I want to allow plenty of time for the king’s messenger to come in with the scroll and ribbons and the seal. But when we get to the door of the Tower there is no one there, just the small crowd around the straight stone path, and at the end of the path an impromptu block of wood, and a youth with a black hood and an axe standing beside it.
I have my pennies to pay him cold in my hand as the chaplain precedes me, and we walk the little way towards him. I don’t look up at the Beauchamp Tower to see if my grandson has disobeyed me and is looking out of Edward’s window. I don’t think I would be able to set one foot before another if I saw their little faces looking down on me as I walk to my death.
There is a gust of wind from the river and the standards suddenly flap. I take a deep breath and I think of the others who have walked out of the Tower before me, in the certainty that they were going to heaven. I think of my brother, walking to Tower Hill, feeling the rain on his face and the wet grass under his boots. My little brother, as innocent as my grandson of everything but his name. None of us is imprisoned for what we have done; we are imprisoned for being who we are, and nothing can change that.
We get to the headsman though I have hardly noticed the walk. I wish that I had thought more about my soul and prayed as I walked along. I have no coherent thoughts, I have not completed my prayers, I am not ready for death. I give him the two pennies in his black-leather mittened hand. His eyes glint through the holes in the mask. I notice that his hand is trembling and he thrusts the coins in his pocket and grips tightly to the axe.
I stand before him and I say the words that every condemned person is to say. I stress my loyalty to the king and recommend obedience to him. There is a moment when I feel like laughing out loud at this. How can anyone obey the king when his wishes change by the minute? How can anyone be loyal to a madman? I send my love and my blessings to the little Prince Edward, though I doubt that he will live to be a man, poor boy, poor accursed Tudor boy, and I send my love and blessings to the Princess Mary and I remember to call her Lady Mary and I say that I hope that she blesses me, who has loved her so dearly.
“That’s enough,” Philips interrupts. “I am sorry, your ladyship. You are not allowed to speak for long.”
The headsman steps forward and says: “Put your head on the block and stretch out your hands when you are ready for it, ma’am.”
Obediently, I put my hands on the block and awkwardly lower myself down to the grass. I can smell the scent of it under my knees. I am aware of the ache in my back and the sound of a seagull crying and someone weeping. And then suddenly, just as I am about to put my forehead against the rough top of the wooden block, and spread my arms wide to signal that he can strike, a rush of joy, a desire for life, suddenly comes over me, and I say: “No.”
It’s too late, the axe is up over his head, he is bringing it down, but I say: “No” and I sit up, and pull myself up on the block to get to my feet.
There is a terrible blow on the back of my head, but almost no pain. It fells me to the ground and I say “No” again, and suddenly I am filled with a great ecstasy of rebellion. I do not consent to the will of the madman Henry Tudor, and I do not put my head meekly down upon the block, and I never will. I am going to fight for my life and I say “No!” as I struggle to rise, and “No” as the blow comes again, and “No” as I crawl away, blood pouring from the wound in my neck and my head, blinding me but not drowning my joy in fighting for my life even as it is slipping away from me, and witnessing, to the very last moment, to the wrong that Henry Tudor has done to me and mine. “No!” I cry out. “No! No! No!”