They bowed and left and I was alone with Kingston, who pitied me, I think.
“Do you know why I am here?” I asked again.
“Nay,” he replied.
“When did you last see the King?”
“I have not seen him since I saw him in the tiltyard.”
“Where is Lord Rochford?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“He was in the tiltyard also.”
A terrible fear came to me. I said to myself more than to him: “Oh, where is my sweet brother?”
“I saw him last at York Place.”
I covered my face with my hands.
“I hear say that I shall be accused with three men, and I can say no more than…nay. Oh Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower and thou and I shall die together.” I thought of my stepmother; her grief would be terrible. I murmured, “Oh, my mother, thou wilt die of sorrow. Master Kingston, do you think I shall die without justice?”
“Oh, Madam, the poorest subject of the King has that,” he said.
That set me laughing wildly. I could not shut out of my mind memories of that large face with the hard little eyes and the cruelest mouth in the world.
I threw myself onto my bed and laughed and wept until I was exhausted.
I had lost count of the days. I did not know how I lived through them. They were determined to discountenance me, to rob me of comfort.
If only they would let me have my friends about me, that would have helped me. Was it too much to ask? If I could only talk with Mary Wyatt, Margaret Lee, Madge or my sister Mary—that would have helped me through the dismal days. They had given me those who hated me. They sent my aunt, Lady Boleyn, wife of my father's brother Edward, who had always been jealous of me, and although in days past she had been afraid to speak against me, I had always been aware of her venom. Perhaps they chose her because they knew she hated me. And she brought with her a certain Mrs. Cosyns—a spy if ever there was one. Those two were certain, I was sure, that I was guilty of all of which I was accused.
They tried to trap me into saying something which they could report against me. They were there all the time; they never left me. They slept on pallets at the foot of my bed. Sometimes I would wake from a nightmare shouting. They were alert, listening, noting everything that I said, attaching great importance to anything that might be used against me.
They treated me with a studied lack of respect. I was not the Queen now, they were telling me.
Sometimes they would pretend to be sympathetic and try to get me to confide in them. They asked questions and they phrased them in a way designed to trap me.
“Oh, you were ever so beautiful in the Court. You were the brightest star. Everyone seemed commonplace beside you. It was small wonder that all those men were in love with you.”
The stupid women! Did they not understand that I saw through their probing?
“Norris was said to be courting Madge Shelton, but he came to see you. You were the one. It was obvious…”
“And Weston…he loved you better than he loved his wife. Well, it was understandable.”
I turned from them. I could live through these days only by ignoring them.
My moods changed. There were times when I just wanted to die and have done with the wearisome business of living; at others my anger overcame my sorrow.
I wanted to live and take my revenge on those people who had plotted against me and brought me to where I was.
It was a great joy to me when I was allowed to have two more ladies to be with me, and that these two should be my cousin Madge and my dear friend Mary Wyatt.
Lady Boleyn and Mrs. Cosyns were still there, but that was more bearable now that I had my friends as well.
Mary was very worried about her brother. He had not been arrested as everyone expected him to be, for he had been known as a great friend of mine and he had never hidden his love for me. Many of his poems had been written for me.
I would contrive to be alone with Mary so that we could talk, and she comforted me a great deal.
“It is only Smeaton who has lied about you,” she told me, “and that was under torture. Cromwell tortured him at the dinner table. His bullies put a rope around the poor creature's head and they tightened it so that he was fainting with the pain; then they made him say how you had favored him, given him fine clothes and a ring because he was your lover. He withstood the agony for a long time. Then they took him to the Tower and racked him most piteously. It was only then that he broke down and lied.”
“Poor Mark,” I said. “He is a tender boy… little more than a child. Always so gentle. He told me once that when beggars came to his father's door he wept for them; and when he came across a man hanging on a gibbet which others were looking at, he ran away, for he could not face violence of any kind. He loved beauty… And to come to this…”
“It was only at the end that he lied,” insisted Mary. “It was only when those wicked men tortured him beyond endurance. The others would not give way. There is not one, Anne, who has spoken against you… only poor Mark, and that under torture.”
“They know it is false.”
“They know … but they are determined to believe it.”
“Mary, what will become of me?”
She shook her head. Her tears unnerved me more than the brutal treatment of Norfolk had been able to, or the spying of my aunt and her familiar.
“Why is George in the Tower?”
Mary shook her head.
“And my father?”
“He has not been arrested.”
We could not go on talking because my jailers—those two hateful women—would not leave us alone for long.
The nights seemed endless. I would lie staring into the darkness.
He would be rid of me so that he could marry Jane Seymour, just as once he had wished to be rid of Katharine that he might marry me. Silly little Jane Seymour. How long did she think she would last? He would cast off wives as he did a garment he was tired of.
There were two counts on which I had thought he might be rid of me. One was of course his relationship with my sister Mary which would have made a close bond between us. He had thought of this before for there had been a time when he had sent to Rome for a dispensation. He would not have had to send to the Pope for that now. Obliging Cranmer would have done what was necessary. But he did not wish to stir up old scandals from which he would not emerge too well. I had dismissed Mary as a possible method. There was one other—my pre-contract with Northumberland. That I had thought was very possible. It could be said that I had been pre-contracted to Henry Percy and therefore my marriage to the King was no true one.
That would have been the most likely method if it had not been raised before and he had most definitely quashed it. Then he had wanted me passionately—now he wanted to be rid of me with equal passion.
I would not have believed he would have considered… death.
And yet why should he not? That would have been Katharine's fate but for her royal relations. I had no such assets. My relations held the power they did through me… and some from Mary, too, of course.
So, if it was not to be Mary or Northumberland, there was only one alternative.
I had sometimes wondered how people felt when Death looked them in the face. Sir Thomas More? Fisher? Those monks who had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy? “She will spurn our heads off like footballs, but 'twill not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.” More had said that. He was prophetic.
He had known the King as well as I knew him. He knew that mean, selfish nature, that determination to have his way, that ruthless destruction of all those who stood to prevent it. He knew of the conscience which worried Henry when he wished to be worried. It was worrying him now. He had been bewitched by a sorceress; he had discarded his first wife—he could safely regard her with affection now as there was no fear of having to take her back—and all because he had been the victim of a witch…as any man might be through no fault of his own. But God had opened his eyes now. He saw the way clear ahead. God had put Jane Sey-mour in his path to tell him that, if he escaped from the spell which had been put upon him and married this gentle, simple girl, Heaven would smile. He would have a succession of boys. God was showing him the way, and, as once before, God's instrument was Cromwell, who had prised the truth from the boy musician, and now it was known that the Queen had sinned against him with those whom he had called his friends.