Doomed Queen Anne (15 page)

I felt as though I had been struck. “We must put a stop to this!” I cried, and sank weakly upon a bench.

“Then you must convince the king to have Wolsey arrested at once. There is no time to lose.”

I rushed to the king’s apartments, swept past a number of gentlemen in the presence chamber, and demanded to see the king. One of the henchmen stepped forward to stop me, but I pushed by him and boldly entered the king’s privy chamber.

“The cardinal is a traitor!” I cried out in front of everyone, for I wanted them all to hear what I would say “I have proof now, and you cannot argue against it, that Wolsey has turned against you for the last time.”

“Then say it, madam,” the king ordered sternly.

I repeated my father’s words. As he listened, the king’s blue eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened dangerously.

This time he listened to me. He bellowed for the captain of the guards. “Arrest Wolsey,” he barked. “And bring him to me.”

Days passed; I worried that the cardinal had fled to the Continent, perhaps to Rome, before he could be seized. Then we received word that the cardinal had fallen ill and collapsed by the roadside. I suspected a trick, but only hours later Wolsey’s servant appeared, already dressed in mourning. Cardinal Wolsey was dead. Secretly I rejoiced, but I also believed that he had gotten off too easily. He should have been hanged as a traitor.

WOLSEY WAS DEAD, but Catherine lived on. Her death would have simplified matters greatly, for as a widower King Henry would have been free to marry me at once.

And there was still Lady Mary, the former princess, who by all reports had turned into a delicately beautiful young woman and—as Henry liked to remind me from time to time, whenever he thought of her—a person of remarkable brilliance.

“Her Latin is faultless,” the king boasted. “She reads Greek as easily as she does English and has since early childhood. She plays with great skill upon the virginals and the lute, and her tutors speak admiringly of her quick and inquiring mind.”

“How nice,” I responded.
How dull
, I thought.

“I have no doubt that she would make a fine ruler one day,” Henry continued. I drew in my breath, dreading to hear what he might say next. “If only she were a
man!
he finished.

I let my breath out slowly. “But she is not, my love,” I said, stroking the king’s hand, toying with the massive rings that encircled each large finger. “I will provide you with sons,” I reminded him. “Just as soon—”

“Yes, yes, yes!” he broke in irritably. “I know all that! You need not remind me.”

Prudently I held my tongue.

Then George brought me an unwelcome piece of information, conveyed to him by the spies he had placed in Catherine’s household. “You will not like to hear this, dear Nan,” said my brother. “For it will gravely weaken the king’s case in the Great Matter.”

“Please tell me quickly,” I said, my throat tightening.

“Mistress Catherine, as we must now call her, insists that she was a virgin at the time of her marriage to Henry.”

“But how can that be? Was she not legally married to Arthur?”

“She was. When Catherine and Arthur were wed in November of 1501, the young prince was already ill, suffering from consumption. And when he died five months later, Catherine was still an untouched virgin, so she claims. She intends to argue that, since the marriage was unconsummated, her marriage to Henry is indeed valid.”

It is her word against his
, I thought, my heart pounding. When I found my voice, I said, “No matter what Mistress Catherine claims, the marriage has ended. King Henry will make certain of that.” But in my heart, I was not so sure. Only Catherine’s death would truly bring an end to it.

CHAPTER 13: Promises and Threats, 1531

I felt the days slipping away like water, and that increased my despondency In summer I would turn twenty-four. Every time I glanced into the mirror, I saw plainly that the first bloom of youth had faded. There were many pretty maidens at court to catch the eye of the aging king, now nearly forty.

I feared that by the time the king was free to marry, he would think me too old to be his wife and find another, younger, woman. I would be abandoned, discarded, wanted by no one. King Henry continued to profess his love for me, but on many dark nights I lay awake tormented by doubt:
Why does he not simply declare himself the head of the Church, dissolve his marriage to Catherine, and marry me—before it’s too late? Does he love me ENOUGH?

At court I was still the center of attention. The gentlemen found me alluring, but the ladies were another matter. To my face they courted my favor, but I believed that every one of them waited for me to make a misstep. I still had no close friends but my brother, and I did not trust his wife’s influence upon him. Despite Lady Rochford’s simpering smiles and ingratiating words—she never failed to say flattering things about my gowns and jewels—I felt that she was capable of betraying both me and her husband.

ON MAY DAY WE PREPARED to celebrate, as usual, with feasting and dancing. I had not intended to take part in the masque, but when one of the dancers, Lady Brereton, fell ill at the last moment, I agreed to take her place. I dressed in Lady Brereton’s costume with my hair hidden beneath a net of gold. A headdress of elegant feathers stitched to a velvet mask concealed my face.

“You look entirely unlike yourself, mistress,” said Nell wonderingly, holding a mirror so that I could admire my disguise.

And so it proved, when I found myself in the midst of a number of gentlewomen, wives of the king’s favorite courtiers. All were masked, but I recognized their voices. Unaware of the exchange with Lady Brereton and ignorant of my presence among them, they began to gossip about me.

“It seems that the king can find no way to get rid of her,” said a voice I recognized as Lady Morley’s, George’s mother-in-law and a close friend of the former queen. “She clings to him like a nettle.”

“She knows no shame!” sneered another. “She wears her hair loose upon her shoulders, as though she were still a young virgin!”

Her friend laughed softly. “She insists upon that, does she not? But I know not a soul who believes her protests!”

I trembled as the insulting words struck home, but my limbs were incapable of moving me away.

“The signs have been clear all along.”

“Signs of what, pray?”

Their voices dropped, and I strained to hear.

“That she is a witch,” whispered Lady Wingfield. “The little extra finger that she goes to such lengths to disguise—
that
surely is a sign. And I have heard that the blemish on her neck, always hidden beneath a jewel, is a pap where a demon comes to suck.”

“I myself believe she has put a spell on King Henry!” That voice belonged to Lady Rochford, George’s wife.

My heart beat faster as I listened, and my anger mounted. Blood pounded in my temples, my mouth was dry as dust, and my hands were shaking.
How dare you speak of me like this?
I wanted to shout at them.
One day I shall be queen above all of you!

Then, as the musicians began to play and we took our places for the masque, I allowed my disguise to drop. I asked Lady Rochford for help securing it in place. I relished the look of horror that crossed each of the faces as the ladies recalled exactly what they had said against me. I would never forgive them.

AND STILL MY TROUBLES grew more serious. Early in the autumn Henry arranged a hunting party with Brereton, Brandon, my brother, and others of his favorites. “Good sweetheart,” he said, taking his leave, “I shall be gone but a fortnight, and then I shall be in your arms once again.”

I was lodging at Cardinal Wolsey’s splendid York Place, renovated and renamed Whitehall to erase all traces of its former owner. The king had been gone for several days when my mother and I received an invitation from my aunt. Lady Anne Shelton, and her daughter, Margaret, to sup with them at their mansion on the Thames a few miles upriver from Whitehall. I was grateful for the invitation, for when the king was absent and I was alone, my fears for my future at times grew large enough to overcome me.

My brother, hearing of our plans, rushed to warn me of danger. “Crowds of angry women have been gathering to shout their ill will toward you,” George told me. “They are angry because taxes have been increased, because crop failures have brought about a threat of famine, for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with you. Yet you are being blamed. You do not have the popular support that Catherine has. They do not want the king to marry you.”

“What care I, if they love me or no?” I said, although in truth I
did
care, deeply. “I have the king’s love. The people will come to love me when I have provided them with their future king.”

“It may take more than an heir to the throne to win them over.”

“And?” My lips had begun to quiver, and my eyes filled with tears. “What have they shouted, George? Pray tell me.”

“Over and over they shout, ‘No Nan Bullen for us!’ They are a dangerous mob, dear sister. I wish that I could accompany you to assure your safety, but the king has summoned me to join him, and I must leave at once.”

“Have no fear for my safety, George,” I assured him with more bravado than I felt. “We will take several guards with us and travel well disguised.”

And so we did, arriving without incident at the Sheltons’ mansion, where we were welcomed warmly by my aunt and my cousin, Margaret, a comely girl with lustrous auburn curls.

Our conversation was suddenly interrupted by servants who rushed in to warn us of a commotion. A crowd had gathered by the gates, they said, and threatened to break through.

“They are all women,” announced one of the cook’s helpers, “and they are clamoring for you, Lady Anne.”

“For me?” I cried, greatly alarmed.

“Yes, madam Nan Bullen, they shout and demand that you come out.”

“What can we do?” I wept, now thoroughly frightened. George had been right, and I had been foolish not to heed his warnings.

“Go with Margaret,” said Lady Shelton. Then she ordered her servants, “Fend them off as best you can.” My cousin led us to a narrow stairway, which we climbed quickly to a chamber with a small window overlooking the main gate. The narrow streets leading to the manor house swarmed with shouting women carrying knives and broomsticks. The crowd seemed to be turning into a huge and unruly beast.

I was terrified. My mother and I had only Nell and a few attendants with us, not enough guards to protect us, and my aunt’s household could not be expected to hold off such a mob for long.

A young servant of the household, a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, rushed up the stairway, his clothing in tatters, his face scratched and bloody. “I got away from them,” he told us, between gasps for breath. “Mistress, you are in terrible danger! It looks like a crowd of women, but one of the vicious hags who came after me had a beard! He was dressed in petticoats and a cap to give the appearance of a woman, but I know a man when I see one.”

“But what do they want?” I sobbed.

“They call for your death, my lady,” said the young fellow, bursting into unmanly tears.

“What is your name, lad?” asked Lady Shelton, who had a cool head on her shoulders.

“Edward, mistress,” snuffled the boy. “Son of the hostler.”

“Edward, you know how to row a boat, do you not?”

Edward nodded, wiping his nose upon his sleeve.

“Fetch your father and go down to the water gate. There you will find two or three old wherries. Bail them, if need be, and wait for us there. We will come disguised as the very women who are clamoring in the streets.”

“But how will I know it is you, mistress?” asked Edward.

“I will shout ‘God save the king!’ No one dares argue with that.”

When the boy had run off to find his father. Lady Shelton summoned those servants who had not already taken refuge with us in the upper chamber and ordered them to hand over their kirtles and petticoats, their rough woolen jerkins and leather buskins and caps. My mother and I, as well as my aunt and cousin, quickly dressed in these rude garments. We hurried down to the scullery and crept out through a back entrance, groped in darkness past the stables, and descended the damp and slippery steps leading to the water gate. Two men and a boy waited by the wooden boats.

Lady Shelton called out grimly, “God save the king!” and Edward piped, “God save the king.”

The boy’s father and uncle helped us to climb aboard the wherries. One by one the boats slipped out onto the dark river.

“The tide is against us, my lady,” said Edward’s father, who had agreed to row the boat in which I huddled with my mother and Nell and two other servants, all of us quaking with terror.

“Then go with it—anything to get away from the mob—but make for the opposite shore. When the tide turns, head downriver for Greenwich.”

“Not to Whitehall?” my mother whimpered, clutching my arm.

“The mob might have gone there as well,” I answered.

Never had I spent a more wretched night. A heavy mist began to fall, but we had no shelter from it, and soon our rough disguises were wet and cold. On the opposite shore of the Thames, the raving mob surged angrily around Lady Shelton’s mansion, their smoking torches adding an eerie glow.

“It looks like a scene from hell,” muttered Edward’s father as we shivered against a stone wall slick with wet moss.

The mist became a heavy rain, and the crowd began to disperse. When the tide turned sometime after midnight, our boatman headed downriver toward Greenwich, and my aunt and cousin cautiously returned to their mansion on the opposite bank.

For the moment, at least, I was safe. I sent a message to the king, who cut short his hunting party and hurried to my side.

“By Saint George, I will punish those responsible!” the king promised, but the leaders of the mob could not be found. From then on I so feared for my safety that I would not leave the palace except under heavy guard.

Dear God, help me,
I prayed earnestly.
I cannot hear to be so hated by those I would have love me!
But if God heard my prayers, he seemed not to soften the hearts of my enemies, and my despair deepened.