“What do you suggest that we do? That we give up the plan?”
“Not give it up. Postpone. You will be moved again perhaps. Let us hope it will be back here. One thing I am certain of: we cannot do it from Hunsdon.”
I was not sure how disappointed I was. Now that I had lost my mother, I often thought I had lost my interest in life and my reason for living.
So the plan was set aside and in due course I came to my home at Hunsdon.
I HAD CEASED to brood on what my fate would have been if the escape plot had proceeded, for events were moving very fast at Court. The rift between the King and Anne Boleyn was widening; his feelings for Jane Seymour were deepening; and people were rallying to the Seymour family as before they had to the Boleyns. Chapuys was excited. He believed that the marriage was about to be declared invalid, and he considered what that would mean to me. But if my father was enamored of Jane Seymour, his desire would be to get a son from her; he could still do that if he divorced Anne, for now that my mother was dead he would be free to marry, even in the eyes of the Pope—though my father did not have to care for his opinions now. We all knew that he could without much difficulty cast off Anne Boleyn. He only had to trump up a charge against her. Adultery was the most likely for, according to reports, she was always surrounded by admiring young men, and her attitude was inclined to be flirtatious with them.
Chapuys was watching the situation closely, and his visits to me were more frequent. He told me that my father had people looking into the possibility of a divorce.
“There seem to be some difficulties,” said the ambassador. “All the proceedings were so closely linked to his marriage with your mother, and he does not want that brought out again. It will remind people of his quarrel with the Pope. He just wants to rid himself of Anne Boleyn as simply and speedily as possible.”
“What do you think he will do?”
“He might try charging her with adultery, which would have farreaching effects. Treason to himself… foisting a bastard on the nation as the King's child… all good reasons for getting rid of her.”
It was long since I had thought of the child Elizabeth. How I had resented her when we were both at Hatfield and I was more or less a member of her household. Poor baby, it was no fault of hers. Yet I had hated her. That was just because I had been insulted by her taking precedence over me. Now I thought: Poor child, is she to be treated as I was? What will become of her?
The winter was over, and spring had come; and my father was still married to Anne Boleyn. I heard rumors of the quarrels between them, how she had discovered him with Jane Seymour behaving like lovers, how she had raged and ranted against him and had been told she must take what her betters had before her. So he remembered my mother and admitted the anguish he had caused her. And the proud, brazen Anne Boleyn, how would she take that?
Everyone knows what happened on that May Day, how they were together at the joust at Greenwich, how the King did not speak to Anne as she sat beside him in the royal lodge, how she took out a handkerchief, wiped her brow and allowed it to flutter to the ground, how one of the courtiers—Norris, I think—picked it up on his lance and held it to her with a bow, how the King suddenly turned away in anger and so the joust ended.
That was the beginning. My father must have staged it, for he had already set Cromwell to question those about her. He had decided that, as it would be difficult to arrange a divorce, he would accuse her of adultery. His love had been intense, and no doubt that made his hatred the more fierce. Greatly he had disliked my mother but never with the same venom that he turned on Anne Boleyn. He was going to accuse her of adultery, treason to the King, which carried the penalty of death.
Cromwell wrung a confession from Mark Smeaton, one of her musicians, through torture, most people thought; the young men closest to her— Norris, Francis Weston and William Brereton—were all arrested and sent to the Tower. Most shocking of all, her brother George was accused of incest with her, and there was even a suggestion that Elizabeth was his daughter.
I had always hated her, as she had hated me. We had been the bitterest of enemies; but when I thought of all the indignity and humiliation which had been heaped on my mother, and realized that Anne Boleyn was now the object of my father's fury, I could feel sorry for her.
She was found guilty with those who were accused with her. Of course she was. It was intended.
Norris, Weston and Brereton were taken out to Tower Hill and beheaded. George Boleyn and his sister would follow.
The day before her execution, Lady Kingston, in whose care Anne Boleyn had been placed in the Tower, came to me.
She said, “The Queen has sent me to you, my lady.”
I was always a little taken aback to hear Anne Boleyn referred to as the Queen, even now, though Heaven knew I had heard that title used often enough to describe her. I was about to retort: You are referring to the concubine. But something restrained me. For all her sins, she was suffering acute anguish now.
“What would she want of me?” I asked.
“Forgiveness, my lady,” she replied. “She made me sit in her chair… the Queen's chair… for they have not taken that away from her… and she knelt most humbly at my feet. She said to me, ‘Go to the Princess Mary and kneel to her as I kneel to you. My treatment of the Princess weighs heavily on my conscience. I was cruel to her and I regret that now. For everything else I can go to my Maker with a clear conscience, for I have committed no sin save in my conduct toward the Princess and her mother. I cannot ask forgiveness of Queen Katharine but I humbly beg the Princess to grant me hers. Let her know you come in my name and that it is I who kneel to her through you.'”
I was astounded. I thought: Poor woman, she is indeed brought low.
But she remembered me in her darkest moments and she was now asking my forgiveness.
It was hard to forgive her, but an image of my mother rose in my mind and I knew what she would have me do.
I said, “Tell her to rest in peace. I forgive her on behalf of myself and my mother.”
The next day she went to Tower Green and laid her head on the block.
The Betrayal
NO SOONER WAS ANNE BOLEYN DEAD THAN MY FATHER WAS betrothed to Jane Seymour. I am not sure how many days elapsed before he married. It could not have been more than ten. I heard that it had taken place on the 30th of May in the Queen's Closet at York Place. Anne Boleyn had died on the 19th.
I often wondered about my father and whether his nights were disturbed by the ghosts of those who had fallen foul of his will. For so many years Anne Boleyn had been the center of his life. How could he have tired of her so quickly? I wondered about Jane Seymour. I had seen her on one or two occasions and found her gentle and unassuming. She had always been pleasant to me.
The story was that about a month before Anne's death my father had sent her a purse of sovereigns, telling her of his passion for her and hinting that she should become his mistress. Her reply had been that she could be no man's mistress, not even the King's. It was the familiar pattern. Anne Boleyn had started it. I wondered Jane Seymour did not have a few qualms about following her predecessor along such a dangerous path.
Of course she had ambitious brothers and, from what I heard of her, I imagined she would not be one to put up much resistance. In that of course she was the exact opposite of Anne. In fact, she seemed to be so in many ways. Perhaps that was why the King was attracted by her.
Elizabeth was at Hunsdon. She was now three, old enough to recognize the chilly change which was passing through the house and was to affect her.