Doomed Queen Anne (21 page)

Today my turn will come. I am very afraid. I can scarcely breathe.

I do not know how I will be able to walk those last steps to the scaffold. Will my legs support my weight? Who will walk with me? Will I swoon and be carried up the wooden steps, my head placed upon the block by someone else’s hands? And who will be there to see me die? Will they make any sound? What of dear Nell? Will she be there? Will the king watch from some secret place? Will he hear the last cry wrung from my lips? What will he feel as the sword falls and my soul flies from my body? Will he then dress in yellow and dance with his new love? And my daughter, Elizabeth? What will become of her?

When I die today, it will not be the lowborn Lady Anne Boleyn, but noble Queen Anne, wife of King Henry VIII of England, who enters into eternal life. If I must die, then I will die boldly, as I have lived.

EPILOGUE

Anne Boleyn was beheaded on Tower Green, X ML within the walls of the Tower, on the nineteenth of May, 1536. Her body and severed head were later buried in a tomb in the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London.

The day after Anne’s execution. King Henry was betrothed to Jane Seymour; they were wed ten days later. On the twelfth of October, 1537, Queen Jane gave birth to a healthy son, named Edward. Within two weeks Queen Jane was dead of childbed fever.

Henry VIII wed three more times before his death in 1547 but fathered no more children. His son, Edward, who inherited the throne, died in 1553 and was succeeded by Mary. After Mary’s death in 1558, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth, was crowned queen and ruled for forty-five years.