Henry’s voice broke on a sob. He remembered a rumor that when he had thought of going to France and leaving Anne as Regent, she had talked wildly of getting rid of Mary; some had said she meant to poison her.
He held the boy against his chest.
“You and your sister Mary ought to thank God for escaping that cursed and venomous whore who tried to poison you both!” he declared.
Anne was desolate. The weary days were passing. There were with her two women, day and night, whom she hated and knew to be her enemies. These had been sent as her attendants by command of the King. They were a certain Mrs. Cosyns, a spy and a talebearer, and her aunt, Lady Boleyn, who was the wife of her uncle, Sir Edward. This aunt had always been jealous of her niece, right from the time when she was a precocious child considered in the family to be clever. These two, at Cromwell’s instigation, wore her down with their questions as they tried to trap her into admissions; they were sly-faced, ugly women, envious, jealous women who enjoyed their position and were made most gleeful by the distress of the Queen. Every chance remark that fell from her lips was repeated with some distortion to make it incriminating. This was just what Cromwell wanted, and he was therefore pleased with these two women. Those ladies whom she would have liked to have beside her, were not allowed to come to her. She longed to talk with Margaret Lee and Mary Wyatt, with her own sister, Mary, with Madge; but no, she must be followed, no matter where she went, by these two odious females or by Lady Kingston who was as cold as her husband and had little sympathy, having seen too much suffering in her capacity of wife of the Constable of the Tower to have much to spare for one who, before this evil fate had befallen her, had enjoyed in plenty the good things of life.
But news filtered through to Anne. Her brother had been arrested. On what charge? Incest! Oh, but this was grotesque! How could they say such things! It was a joke; George would laugh; they could not hurt George. What had George done to deserve this? “For myself,” she cried, “I have been foolish and careless and over-fond of flattery. I have been vain and stupid. . . . But oh, my sweet brother, what have you ever done but help me! I would die a thousand deaths rather than you should suffer so through me.”
The sly women nodded, carefully going over what she had said. By eliminating a word here, a sentence there, they could give a very good account of themselves to Thomas Cromwell.
“Wyatt here!” she exclaimed. “Here in the Tower?” And she wept for Wyatt, calling him Dear Thomas, and was over-wrought, recalling the happy days of childhood.
“Norris is here. Norris accused me. . . . Oh, I cannot believe it of Norris. . . . Oh, I cannot! He would never betray me.”
She could not believe that Norris would betray her! Then, argued Cromwell, if she cannot believe he would betray her, is not that an admission that there is something to betray?
When she was tired, they would pretend to soothe her, laying wily traps.
“What of the unhappy gentlemen in the Tower?” she wanted to know. “Will any make their beds?”
“No, I’ll warrant you; they’ll have none to make their beds!”
She showed great solicitude for the comfort of her paramours, they reported.
“Ballads will be made about me,” she said, smiling suddenly. “None can do that better than Wyatt.”
She spoke with great admiration and feeling of Thomas Wyatt, they then told Cromwell.
She wept bitterly for her baby. “What will become of her? Who will care for her now? I feel death close to me, because I know of her whom the King would set up in my place, but how can he set up a new queen when he has a queen already living? And what of my baby? She is not yet three. It is so very young, is it not? Could I not see her? Oh, plead for me please! Have you never thought how a mother might long for a last glimpse of her daughter! No, no. Bring her not to me. What would she think to see me thus! I should weep over her and frighten her, since the thought of her frightens me, for she is so very young to be left alone in a cruel world. . . . Say not that I wish to see my baby.”
Her eyes were round with fear. They would be so clever at thinking up fresh mental torture for her to bear. Not that though! Not Elizabeth!
“She will be playing in her nursery now. What will become of her? After all, is she not the King’s daughter?”
Then she began to laugh shrilly, and her laughter ended in violent weeping. For she thought, They will call her bastard now perhaps . . . and this is a judgment on me for my unkindness to Katharine’s daughter Mary. Oh, Katharine, forgive me. I knew not then what it meant to have a daughter. And what if the King . . .
But she could not think; she dared not. Oh, but she knew him, cold and relentless and calculating, and having need to rid himself of her. Already she was accused with five men, and one of them her own, and so innocently loved, brother. What if he said Elizabeth were not his child? What will he care for her, hating her mother? And if he married Jane Seymour . . . if she is Queen, will she be kind to my baby daughter . . . as I was to Mary? Jesus, forgive me. I was wicked. I was wrong . . . and now this is my punishment. It will happen to me as it happened to Katharine, and there will be none to care for my daughter, as there was none to care for Mary.
Such thoughts must set her weeping; then remembering that when she had become Henry’s Queen she had chosen as her device “Happiest of Women,” she laughed bitterly and long.
“How she weeps! How she laughs!” whispered the women. “How unstable she is . . . hysterical and afraid! Does not her behavior tend to show her guilt?”
She talked a good deal; she did not sleep; she lay staring into the darkness, thinking back over the past, trying to peer into the future. Despair enveloped her. The King is cruel and cold; he can always find a righteous answer when he wishes to do some particularly cruel deed. I am lost. There is naught can save me now! Hope came to her. But he loved me once; once there was nothing he would not do for me. Even to the last I could amuse him, and I tried hard enough. . . . I could delight him more than any an I gave myself up to it. He does this but to try me. He will come to me soon; all will be well.
But no! I am here in the Tower and they say evil things of me. My friends are here. George, my darling, my sweet brother, the only one I could truly trust in the whole world. And they know that! That is why they have sent you here, George; that is why they imprison you; so that I shall have none to help me now.
She asked for writing materials. She would write; she would try to forget his cruel eyes; she would try to forget him as he was now and remember him as he used to be when he had said the name of Anne Boleyn was the sweetest music to his ears.
