VIII, page 25
Energised, I put my arm around Cromwell’s neck – lead him away from the grooms and other riders. “So much for Catherine. Let the Almighty gather her to His bosom as soon as He likes. I want to talk to you on another subject.” I lower my voice: “I believe I may have had a sign from God, Thomas. About Queen Anne.”
We reach an empty corner of the yard. I turn to face Cromwell, keeping a grip on his shoulders. I say, “I may have been tricked into this marriage.”
“Tricked?”
I nod. “By witchcraft. Seduced. She is…” I shake my head; start again. “I have seen her true nature. I believe I might take another wife.” I touch my gloved finger to Cromwell’s mouth. “Shh. Our secret.”
He regards me thoughtfully. For a big man, he has small eyes – and they are as sharp as a rat’s. I suppose he is making quick calculations. He says, “Sir. One thing. In such a circumstance… would the Queen, do you think, retire quietly? To—” He pushes out his lower lip; a facial shrug. “To a life of honourable seclusion?”
I look at him. In the distance I hear a double impact as a rider takes a blow and falls heavily to the floor.
It is very cold, standing like this. Cromwell’s nose is red. I don’t answer his question. Instead I say, “There will be a further sign. She has told me she is pregnant again. This new child she is carrying will prove it. Surely? God will speak through this pregnancy.” And, patting Cromwell’s shoulder as I pass, I walk back to my horses.
♦ ♦ ♦ XIII ♦ ♦ ♦
Today, every step is painful. But movement is a distraction; it is worse to sit and rest. Using my stick, I try to put as little weight on my left leg as possible as I walk.
Still, nothing prepares me for the pain that rips through me as I reach the middle of the room. I cringe against the nearest table, my weight on my elbows. I am panting, wondering if I will vomit, as saliva drips onto my hands. My attendants rush forward to help.
“Get away from me!”
They hover, uncertain. My stick has fallen; one of them makes a dash forward to pick it up. He slides it onto the table then backs off, fast.
I turn, still leaning on one elbow, my legs still buckled, and swipe the stick round at the lot of them, but they are standing just out of reach. “Don’t treat me like a bloody invalid!”
I snarl. “Leave me alone! Go and cower behind doors and spy on me through keyholes as I know you do!”
They blink at me stupidly.
“Go on!”
Hesitantly at first, and then all in a rush, they beat a retreat.
I am alone in the Privy Gallery, where I have come to try to walk off the pain. The old wound on my left leg is ulcerated and badly swollen. It needs to burst and discharge its evil humours. Until then it will not heal. Until then I am – intermittently – in agony.
The gallery is a long space – my private walkway – where decorations twist and creep up every available surface. On an evening like this it is lit with wax candles on the fireplace and in the windows, and torches in sconces on the walls. Behind the windows’ shimmering reflections, the night is black and bitterly cold.
For now the pain has subsided; I walk again, haltingly, to the end of the room, and stop, gathering the energy to turn.
Which is when I hear it. The sound of a slow, shuffling tread on the stairs. And something like…
A tapping. No, no – more like a scratching. Listen – there it comes again.
Who said that once? My mother? I have no time to think. Fear makes my heart race; my head is pounding.
The staircase lies at this end of the room – a small spiral of stone steps leading up directly from my private garden. The door at the top stands ajar. The one at the bottom is – or should be – locked, and checked regularly by the guards of the night watch.
No one could possibly be climbing those stairs.
I listen, not breathing. There is a moment of silence, as if whoever is on the stairs is listening too. And then the footsteps resume.
I cannot move – and must move. I retreat crabwise, my eyes on the door.
Slowly, the footsteps come nearer. It seems to take an eternity. Then I see thin fingers grasp the edge of the wood.
As the figure slips through the gap, it turns to look first in the wrong direction, at the empty end of the gallery.
I have a split second to see without being seen – and turn away.
Leaning on my stick, my back to the door, it takes me a moment to regain control. Then I say, “The quivering rabbit. Are you still quivering?” I turn to face her. “Yes, you are. Why did the guards let you through?”
The Seymour girl, Jane, has dropped into a deep curtsey. “I – I don’t know, Your Majesty,” she says. “My brother told me they would.”
“How interesting.”
Her brother, it seems, has convinced the guards I have authorised her admittance. What presumption. I find I am both amused and annoyed.
Thinking this, I am watching her. She squirms under the scrutiny; looks at her hands, the floor, the windows – then begins to fumble with the fastenings of her cloak.
I say, “I saw you the day the child died – remember?”
Her fingers freeze on the cloak’s lacings. “Yes.”
“I remember seeing you.”
Another silence. Jane resumes her task and succeeds in untying the bows. She takes the cloak off, in the smallest, most self-effacing movement possible, and hangs it over one forearm, like a lady’s maid carrying the garments of her mistress.
I say, “Are you here to seduce me, Jane?”
“No!” The shock jolts her; makes her look at me directly, if only for an instant. “No. Lord, no…” I watch as a deep blush spreads over her entire face and throat, and her hands clutch each other, fingers twisting painfully.
I think: Whatever her brother’s up to, he has kept her in the dark. Is she really so simple?
I say, “Then why are you here?”
She bites her lip. “I would like to… My brother says I should ask… if you would like me to play some songs on the virginals for you. He thinks it might help you rest…”
Christ. And she thinks this is what her brother genuinely means. Poor, artless cow.
I say, “Does he? And what do you think… Jane? Do you think it will help me rest?”
Her eyes flick up to me; return to the floor. She says, “I think perhaps you might find a little comfort in the quiet company of a simple girl who has no… no opinions or demands… who wants only to serve her sovereign in whatever way she can.”
Ah. Maybe not so artless after all.
For a moment I remain, watching her. Then I turn and walk to the far end of the gallery – to the door to my apartments.
I open the door without glancing back. I could shut it behind me – I almost do.
Almost, but not quite. For a moment I hesitate. Then I stand aside, holding the door open – leaving room for her to pass.
♦ ♦ ♦ XIV ♦ ♦ ♦
I stride down the passageway, fast. Guards fall back as I slam into the room.
“Up. Up. Get up.”
Faces turn; women servants, startled in the middle of their domestic tasks, drop what they are doing and curtsey hastily.
I drag open the bed curtains. Anne’s face – angry, alarmed, puffy-eyed from crying – stares at me from a mountain of pillows.
“I want to see the body that killed my son. Again.”
This new pregnancy has indeed produced a sign: another male foetus – dead.
Anne’s hands are gripping the coverlet. I grab one thin wrist and pull. She has a job to get to her feet in time before I drag her bodily from the bed.
The servants have disappeared. She stands on the rug, her feet bare, her white nightshift falling straight to her ankles; but she stands as erect as if she were wearing the crown jewels.
I walk round her, twitching up the cloth of her nightshift, which she snatches from me and holds in fistfuls. I say, “Tell me. What is so rotten in this body that it cannot hold a child?”
“It can.”
“A boy child. Girls count for less than nothing. As you know.”
She looks at me, feral, glaring, her long hair disordered; strands of it across her face. She says, “It was the shock of your accident.”
I stop. There is a table beside me. I lean back against it, my hands on the edge, and regard her with interest. I say, “Ah, I see. It is my fault, then?”
My left leg has healed, but at last week’s tournament, forgetting how weakened it has become, I misjudged a manoeuvre in the joust and took a bad fall from my horse. They tell me I lost consciousness for two hours.
Anne’s eyes flash with something like fear and something like contempt. She says, “No, I didn’t say that. But I was so alarmed by the news that you were lying senseless…” She stops; compresses her lips; begins again: “In other pregnancies you have been concerned for my… my peace of mind. Now you should comfort me. But instead you taunt me.”
Comfort me. I think of the ravaged figure I saw under the stairs the day she was delivered of the last dead boy. I say, “Taunt you? With what?”
“The attentions you are paying to…” She lowers her voice to a whisper, “… that whey-faced bitch.”
“I’m sorry, to whom?”
“To another lady. Don’t think I haven’t heard. I know what has been going on.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Well. I am glad to hear that your spies are giving you such good service. Sometime I must remember to find out who they are and punish them. In the meantime, I would advise you to close your eyes, madam, as your betters have done before you. Remember, I have elevated you – and I can humble you again in an instant.”
I turn to go – and get as far as the door before fists pummel my back.
“Why are you cruel to me? You love me!”
I turn, and in one quick movement catch her wrists, and jerk them up, together, in front of her face. “Sweetheart, I really cannot imagine…” She has lowered her head; I dip mine, to meet her eyes, “… what I ever saw in you.” She struggles; I tighten my grip and she stares at me, shocked and defiant, refusing to cry out in pain.
She struggles again. I transfer her wrists to one hand and, with the other, take hold of her hair and drag her head back. The throat is exposed, the ridges of the windpipe stand out beneath the pale smooth flesh. It reminds me of a hunted beast at the kill; this is what the dogs would want to bite.
Pulling her about behind me, I walk across the room. There are noises from her, but not many. She stumbles and struggles – not to get away, but simply to keep her feet and take the weight, dragging, off her hair.
It is when I turn towards the door again that I see, in the corner by the fireplace, the boy. He is crouching on a stool, his knees wide, his hands between, gripping the stool’s front edge. His cheeks are hollow, his eyes glittering in the deep shadows beneath his brows; he is watching with avid interest.
My grip loosens and I am vaguely aware of a thudding sound as Anne’s head hits the floor.
♦ ♦ ♦
I reach my bedchamber; I don’t even remember leaving Anne’s room.
Servants hover – bowing, frightened, writhing like maggots in fancy dress.
“Clear the room. Go!”
I lean over a chair – my hands on its arms. Beyond the sound of my own breathing, I hear footsteps coming up the stairs.
There are no stairs.
But, then… this time it is not Jane who is coming for me.
I draw my sword and set about methodically, energetically checking the room – batting at tapestries, slashing down bed curtains. I see figures in every fold of the hangings. Surely that one covers a face? Surely there a hand is gripping?
I find nothing. But still there is a sense of menace, of something behind me that swings round behind me again each time I move, something that can see me, and is studying me intently – but I can’t see it. I turn and turn like a baited animal.
At last I stand in the centre of the room, holding my sword before me.
I think: Come – I am ready. Let me confront you properly now.
My empty left hand is extended, palm down, fingers spread. And that is where I see it first: a mist running from my fingers’ ends. I drop my sword and hold out both hands. Like sand running in the wind over the surface of a beach it comes: something vaporous from my fingers, something that pours out of me to fill an unseen form, like liquid that reveals a bottle’s shape by filling it.
The shape in front of me is quickly filled. It is him. As if I am standing with my fingertips touching a mirror, his shape mirrors mine: his fingertips seem to touch mine, though I cannot feel them. And just as quickly as the vapours fill his shape, so I am filled with horror. I called him, and he has come. I have conjured him, as they say a witch can conjure the Devil.
He is rattlingly thin, his clothes ragged; he looks squalid, contemptible. His eyes have the cold gleam of a wild beast, his fingers are sharp like claws. Aged and ageless at once, his face bears deep lines now, but they seem more like the lines of a malnourished child than the wrinkles of an old man.
I stare at him, aghast. I say, “Who are you? What are you?”
The boy drops his hands; our link is severed. Then a voice speaks, close in my head.
You tell me.
I think: You look like a creature of hell. I say, “Are you a ghost?”
Slowly, he shakes his head.
“Then I believe you are Lucifer.”
A soft, horrible smile curls the edges of his mouth.
Oh, come. Don’t be dramatic.
He blinks at me. He is still waiting.
So I say, “One of Lucifer’s servants, then? Some lower class of fallen angel?”
This causes him genuine merriment; he throws back his head, his mouth gaping, a black hole of mirth. And as he laughs, rage shoots through me. I think: This thing, this hellish vision, plagues me only because I am an archangel, a warrior of light, battling the dark forces. It is my virtue that draws him.
With a roar I swing at him, putting all my weight behind a punch – but it passes right through his jaw. I stagger. I have swung round to face the opposite direction – yet here he is, in front of me again.
He tips his head to one side and stretches out his arms, a look of mock pleading on his face.
Comfort me?
He is a devil: he must be. He is a herald of evil. And look what he is showing me now… Comfort me. That is what she said – Anne. He is showing me that Anne is his creature. He must have fashioned her precisely to trick me… he made her look like the golden maiden who would provide me with sons. But she was the exact opposite: the Devil’s serpent sent to entrap me.
Just as Jesus Christ was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, so have I been tempted by Anne Boleyn.
And here is my choice: to relinquish my God-given destiny, the glory for which I have fought so hard, sacrificed so much… or to take courage and destroy this devil in all its forms.
A surge of joy runs through me. I feel ecstatic, sure of my blessed vocation and my virtue. I rejoice in it. And I rejoice that God tests me: that he enables me to see the Devil clearly, as others cannot.
The night is past and the day is come nigh.
Let us therefore cast away the deeds of darkness,
and let us put on the armour of light.
I hear something behind me. I turn away from the boy. On the opposite side of the room, the sill of the window has become a horizon, beyond which something is rising. I hear a slow tread on invisible stone stairs. A swaying, monstrous head emerges; scaly claws and short, muscular legs plant themselves above the cliff-edge. I know this serpent: I dreamed of it. I crouch quickly to pick up my sword from the floor.
When I straighten the serpent has become Anne, climbing the wharf steps, her dainty feet stepping in golden slippers. The train of her mantle leaves behind a bloody trail of stinking, rotting flesh.
The next moment it is a serpent again; its neck weaves back and forth. The ridges of the windpipe stand out against white flesh. Against scaly flesh, green and grey.
The serpent’s jaws swing towards me, gaping, stinking and dreadful. I step forward, ducking to reach the neck. I slash and slash and slash.
My sword cannot make contact. The creature advances. I begin to back away. Quicker now. My legs collide with something and I turn.
I yelp. I have backed into the bed and now I see the boy, lying there under the covers. He is like a wife, waiting for me. Like a hideous parody of a wife – his hair greasy and shorn, where hers would flow over the soft white linen of the pillow.
I drop my sword and draw my dagger. I stab and stab and stab – his face, his eyes, his neck. He lies there – he does not struggle; it is like stabbing a corpse. But his eyes are open; he is looking at me. There are hands restraining me now. My servants have returned.
“Fools!” I swing round, slashing one of them across the cheek.
Someone calls for a doctor.
I look back to the bed, panting. I have stabbed the bolster, nothing more. There is no blood, no mark to say he lay there. I am sweating and I am cold.
♦ ♦ ♦ XV ♦ ♦ ♦
The fire is blazing. Beyond its glow, the room is dark. I am sitting wrapped in torn bed hangings, my dagger planted point-down in the table in front of me. I am watching the movement of the flames’ reflection in the sheen of the blade.
In my peripheral vision, I am aware of the pale mass of Cromwell’s face, floating like a dumpling in dark soup. We have been sitting for some time in silence.
At last I say, “Anne must die. And it must be handled quickly. I’m not interested in the mechanics. You will find a way.”
“Poison?”
I shake my head. “Nothing underhand. I would be suspected instantly. It must be clear to everyone what she is.”
I look at Cromwell. I can see that he understands me completely.
♦ ♦ ♦ XVI ♦ ♦ ♦
