The King was at Hampton Court. My spirits rose at the thought of that. If it were going to happen, it would be now.
I realized that, although I was not in a cell, I was to a certain extent a prisoner.
My ladies were there, as they had been, although apart. They were, in a sense, my jailers. I had never attempted to break free from them, having no inclination to walk out. I could not face anyone at Court in my present situation. I was in no mood or any state to do so. All I wanted was to hide myself.
But now I must leave my apartments and get to that section of the palace where the King might be. I knew at what hour he would be attending Mass in the chapel, where I had often been with him. If I could reach him while he was there, I could be certain of seeing him, and that was what I proposed to do. To reach the chapel, I must traverse the long gallery which led to it, and this entailed descending the backstairs from my apartment before I came to the gallery: then I could hurry along it to the chapel.
I had only a vague idea how I should act when I saw Henry. My hair was flowing about my shoulders in the style he most liked. I would throw myself at his knees and I would sob out my misery. I should tell him that I only wished to live if he and I could be happy again as we had been when we were first married.
I pictured him as I had seen him so many times, his face creasing into tenderness, the slackness of his mouth, which could look so cruel and yet be gentle for me; I could see the tears of sentiment in the little eyes. I knew exactly how to make him look like that, and all I needed was to be with him.
I left my bedchamber and went quietly to the adjoining room. There was no one there. Cautiously I opened the door which led to the ladies’ quarters. I paused and listened. I heard the sound of voices. Some of them were there.
I hesitated. Jane had said that they would try to prevent my leaving. I dared not wait too long or Mass would be over and the King gone. I should have to chance being seen. In any case, who were they to prevent my going where I wished? I was not their prisoner … or was I?
I glanced into the room. A group of them were seated at the far end. I did not have to pass them—just slip quietly to a door and out to the stairs.
I was half-way to it when one of the ladies looked up. She exclaimed with surprise and stood up. I saw that it was Margaret Morton.
“Your Majesty…” she began, but I took no notice and sped toward the door.
They were all on their feet now.
“Your Majesty, what is it you require?”
I did not answer. I was through the door and starting down the stairs.
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” They were coming after me. I knew they would try to stop my reaching the King, as Jane had warned me they would. I felt the hysteria rising in me. I must see him. I must. Everything depended on it. They were close to me now … not just one of them, but at least half a dozen.
“Where are you going?” I thought that was Katherine Tylney.
“Your Majesty! Come back. We are here to serve you.”
I thought: you are here to prevent my reaching the King.
I was in the gallery now. I ran as fast as I could. I was breathless … and they were very close to me. One of them reached out and caught my gown. I snatched it away. I had reached the chapel, but they were surrounding me.
I saw Katherine Tylney, Margaret Morton and Joan Bulmer among them. There was fear on their faces. They were as determined not to allow me to see the King as I was to see him. But I was one and they were so many.
They were all round me. They laid their hands on me.
“Leave me,” I commanded. “Leave me.”
They did not answer. They looked sly and triumphant as they pulled me away from the chapel door.
“Take your hands from me,” I cried.
“Your Majesty is unwell. We are going to look after you. Come … let us take you back to your apartment.”
I kept crying out to them to leave me, to take their hands from me, but they dragged me away, nearer and nearer to the stairs. I was sobbing, cursing them, screaming with fury. Perhaps he would hear. But perhaps he did not want to hear. I must make him look at me. Only my presence could do that.
I could hear that wild hysterical voice, and realized it was my own. I was bereft of all hope as they dragged me up the stairs. I was back in my chamber … in prison. I could hear them talking of me.
The Queen had had another of her mad turns.
I lay still while the wildness passed away. I felt limp, exhausted, saying to myself, I can never escape. It is coming to me as surely as it came to my cousin.
I was sunk in utter melancholy and despair.
The Journey to the Tower
IT WAS A FEW DAYS LATER that I heard I was to leave Hampton Court for Syon House.
Jane Rochford said that this might be a good omen. It meant that there were people who would be uneasy about my seeing the King. They had prevented me on one occasion, but what if I should succeed? What if he were to decide to take me back, as many people thought he might be inclined to do? How would all those who had worked against me fare then?
It was the sort of theory one welcomed when one was feeling desperate. I forgot that Jane was one who liked to build up a dramatic situation, to have a plan and attempt to discover devious ways of putting it into practice.
Common sense told me that, if the King really wanted me back, he would soon find some means of getting me. But in my present desperate state, it was comforting to grasp at any hope.
Jane was with me at Syon, a house on the north bank of the Thames near Richmond. It had been a nunnery suppressed by Henry in 1532, when the house had passed to the Crown.
How different it was from Hampton Court! Here indeed I felt a prisoner.
Perhaps I was thinking of poor Lady Margaret Douglas, who had recently been held here under restraint and had been sent away to Kenninghall to make way for me.
Margaret, too, seemed a person destined to fall in love with the wrong people. Perhaps she and I shared a weakness in that way. She had been in the Tower before on account of her attachment to my uncle, Lord Thomas Howard. She had been released from there to be sent to Syon House; then her lover had died and she was freed. Now she was in disgrace again, because of a liaison with another member of my family. This time it was my brother Charles, and she found herself a prisoner in Syon House until my coming, when she was moved to another place of confinement.
Poor Lady Margaret! She must often wish she had not been born royal. It seemed unfair that she should be imprisoned for falling in love and wanting to marry the brother of the woman the King had chosen for his Queen. If Lady Margaret could not expect reasonable consideration, could I?
It was at Syon House that I heard the most alarming news of all. Jane brought it to me. It was the first time since the disaster that I had seen Jane so anxious.
She gasped: “Thomas Culpepper has been arrested.”
I thought I was going to faint. This was indeed disaster. I had hoped by some means to get word to him, to beg him to slip out of the country—but I had been unable to do so.
“What does it mean?” I asked Jane.
“That someone has betrayed him.”
“Who? Who?”
“It must be one of the women … those who were with us during the journey, the ladies of the bedchamber.”
“So they knew!”
“They cannot be sure, but they will know that he came to your bedchamber by night, maybe.”
I covered my face with my hands. I wanted to shut out everything … the memory of my cousin … the terrible fate which could befall us. We had been in acute danger before, but now there was no hope. If the King knew that I had been unfaithful to him, that would be the end … the end of Thomas and of me. He might forgive what had happened before our marriage, but never what had happened after.