Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

There was one member of Anne’s family who did not attend the coronation. Jane Rochford’s jealousy had become uncontrollable, and in her mad rage against her sister-in-law she was even more indiscreet than was habitual with her.

She had said: “This marriage . . . it is no marriage. A man may not take a wife while he has another. Anne is still the King’s mistress, no matter what ceremonies there may be. There is only one Queen, and she is Queen Katharine.”

There were many in support of Queen Katharine, many who shook their heads sadly over the melancholy fate which had befallen the woman whom they had respected as Queen for over twenty years; indeed even those who supported Anne through love or fear could have little to say against Queen Katharine. She must be admired for that calm and queenly dignity which had never deserted her throughout her reign; she had suffered deeply; she had been submitted to mental torture by her unfaithful husband, even before he had brutally told her he would divorce her since she was of no more use to him; she had, by her tactful behavior, managed to endow the King with some of her own dignity, covering his blatant amours, saying and believing “This is but the way of kings!” She who suffered bitter humiliations at the hands of Henry the Seventh during those years which had elapsed between Arthur’s death and her marriage with Henry, bore few grudges; she was meek and submissive when she considered it her duty to be so; when she considered it her duty to be strong she could be as firm and tenacious as Henry himself. Duty was the keynote of her life. She would suffer the severest torture rather than deviate from what she considered right. She had been taught her religion by her mother, Isabella, who in her turn had been taught by that grim zealot, Torquemada.

In these great people—Katharine, Isabella, Torquemada—there burned fierce fires of fanaticism which purged them of fear. Their religion was the rock to which they clung; life on Earth was to them but a dream, compared with the reality to come. Katharine, bound irrevocably to Rome, believing there could be no divorce, was ready to go to the stake rather than give Henry what he demanded; for to her mind earthly torment was a small price to pay for that eternal bliss which was reserved only for those true servants of the Roman Catholic Faith. With all the strength she had possessed she had stood out against her blustering, furious husband, so nobly, so fearlessly, so assured of the right, that even in defeat she appeared to triumph, and there were none who could go into her presence and not treat her as a queen. There was her passionate devotion to her daughter to touch the hearts of all; to this daughter she had given all the affection her husband did not want; she lived for this daughter, and delighted in the belief that one day she would sit on the throne of England; she had superintended her education with the greatest care, had glowed with pleasure at Mary’s aptitude for learning, at her youthful charm, at her father’s affection for her.

The only earthly joy which had lighted Katharine’s somber life was in her daughter, the Princess Mary. Henry, raging against her, cursing her obstinacy, unable to believe she could not see what was so clear to his scrupulous conscience, cursing her because she would not admit having consummated her marriage with his brother, hating her because she could have solved the whole difficulty by going into a nunnery, had struck at her in the most effective way possible, when he had separated her from her daughter.

In doing this he had acted foolishly, for the sympathy of the great mass of people was ever ready to be given to the victim of injustice, and they were all for Katharine and Mary. Mothers wept for them and, with their own children beside them, though they might be humble fishwives, could well understand the sufferings of a queen.

Henry, whose nature demanded homage and admiration, was hurt and alarmed by the sympathy shown to Katharine. Previous to the time when the divorce was mooted, it was he who had strutted across the stage, he on whom all attention was focused—he, large and magnificent, the goodliest of princes, the most handsome of princes, the most sporting of princes, the most loved and admired prince in the world. Katharine had been beside him, but only as a satellite shining with the reflected brilliance from his blazing personality. And now in the hearts of the susceptible and sentimental people she was enshrined as a saint, while he was looked upon as a bully, a promiscuous husband, a brutal man. He could not bear it; it was so unfair. Had he not told them he had merely obeyed the promptings of his conscience? They judged him as a man, not as a king. Then he grew angry. He had explained patiently; he had bared his soul; he had suffered the humiliation of a trial at Westminster Hall; and they did not understand! He had done with patience. He would have all these sullen people know who was their absolute master! A word, a look, would be enough to send any one of them, however high, however low, to the Tower.

Jane’s motives were not of the highest, since it was her jealousy which overcame her prudence. She was a little hysterical. George was so often with the Queen; she had seen emotion in his face at a fancied slight to his sister; he was alert, anxious for her, admonishing her for her impulsiveness, and ridiculously, as people do when they love, loving her the more for it. My faults, thought Jane tearfully, are treated as such; hers are considered virtues.

People were looking furtively at her. When she railed against the Queen, they moved away from her, not wishing to be involved in such recklessness. Jane was too unhappy to care what she said, and gave herself up to the bitter satisfaction of reviling Anne.

Now in her apartment at the palace, she felt about her an ominous calm; those of her associates who had been wont to chat with her or sit with her, were not to be found. Her jealousy burned out, she had time to be frightened, and as she sat and brooded, longing for the return of George that she might tell him of her fears—feeling that he, seeing her in danger, might find her at least worthy of his pity—she heard on the staircase close to her door the sound of footsteps. She leaped up, for there was something in those footsteps of precision and authority; they stopped outside her door; there was a peremptory knocking.

Suppressing a desire to hide, Jane called in a trembling voice: “Come in!”

She knew him. His face was hard; he would have seen much suffering and grown accustomed to it; for he was Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower of London.

Jane’s fingers clutched the scarlet hangings. Her face was drained of color, her lips trembled.

“Lady Jane Rochford, I am to conduct you to the Tower of London on a charge of High Treason.”

Treason! That dreaded word. And she was guilty of it, for it was treason to speak against the King, and in speaking against Anne, this was what she had done.

She felt the room swing round her; one of Sir William’s attendants caught her. They held her head down until the blood rushed back, and they did this naturally, as though they expected it. The room righted itself, but there was a rushing sound in her ears, and the faces of the men were blurred.

She faltered: “There is some mistake.”

“There is no mistake,” Sir William told her. “Your ladyship is requested to leave immediately.”

“My husband . . .” she began. “My sister the Queen . . .”

“I have a warrant for your ladyship’s arrest,” she was told. “I must obey orders. And I must ask your ladyship to accompany us at once.”

Quietly she went out, across the courtyard to the waiting barge. Silently they went up the river. She looked back at the sprawling palace on the riverbank with its squat towers and its mullioned windows—the favorite palace of the King, for he was born there and he liked its situation, which gave him a perfect view of the rising and falling of the river. When, wondered Jane, would she see Greenwich again?

Past the riverside houses of the rich went the barge until it came to that great fortress which now looked sullen in the gray light, forbidding and ominous. How many had passed through the Traitor’s Gate and been swallowed up by that gray stone monster, and so lost to the world outside! It could not happen to me, thought Jane. Not to me! What have I done? Nothing . . . nothing. I did but voice an opinion.

Then she remembered some cynical remark of George’s about those who voiced their opinions and those who were too nearly related to the King, deserving to die.

The barge was made fast; up the stone stairs Jane was led. She felt stifled by the oppressive atmosphere of the place. She was taken through a postern, across a narrow stone bridge, and was brought to the entrance of a gray tower. Trembling, Jane entered the Tower of London and was led up narrow spiral staircases, along cold corridors, to the room she would have to occupy. The door was locked on her. She ran to the window and looked out; below her was the dark water of the Thames.

Jane threw herself onto the narrow bed and burst into hysterical tears. This was her own folly! What did she care for Queen Katharine! What did she care for the Princess Mary! She wished to be no martyr. Well did she know that, had she tried to be Anne’s friend, she could have been, for Anne did not look for enemies—she only fought those who stood against her. And how could poor little Jane Rochford stand against Queen Anne!

She was a fool. Looking back over her married life, she could see how foolish she had been. Oh, for another chance! She was humble, she was repentant, blaming herself. If she went to Anne, confessed her folly, asked for forgiveness, it would be granted, she knew well. She resolved that if she came out of the Tower she would overcome her jealousy of her brilliant sister-in-law; who knew, by so doing might she not gain a little of George’s affection?

She was soothed and calmed, and so remained for some time, until that day which marked the beginning of the celebrations. And then, gazing from her window, she saw the arrival at the Tower of Anne, dressed in cloth of gold and attended by many ladies; and at the sight of her, all Jane’s enmity returned, for the contrast between herself and her sister-in-law was too great to be endured stoically. She had arrived by way of the Traitor’s Gate, while Anne had come in triumph as the Queen. No! Jane could not endure it. Here in this very place was her sister-in-law, feted and honored, adored openly by that mighty and most feared man, Henry the Eighth. It was too much. Jane was overcome by fresh weeping.

“She has many enemies,” said Jane aloud. “There is the true Queen and her daughter; there is Suffolk, Chapuys . . . to name but a few, and all of them powerful people. But Anne Boleyn, though there are many who hate you,” she sobbed bitterly, “none does so as wholeheartedly as your despised Jane Rochford!”

The King was not happy. All through the hot month of June he had been aware of his dissatisfaction with life. He had thought that when Anne became his Queen he would know complete happiness; she had been that for five months, and instead of his happiness growing it had gradually diminished.

The King still desired Anne, but he was no longer in love with her; which meant that he had lost that tenderness for her which had dominated him for six years, which had softened him and mellowed his nature. Never had the King loved any but himself, for even his love for Anne was based on his need of her. She had appeared on his horizon, a gay, laughing girl; to him she represented delightful youth; she was unique in her refusal to surrender; she appeared to be unimpressed by his kingship, and had talked of the need to love the man before the king. In his emotions Henry was as simple as a jungle lion; he stalked his quarry, and at these times stalking was his main preoccupation. The stalking of Anne was finished; she had managed to make it arduous; she had made him believe that the end of the hunt was not her surrender, but her place beside him on the throne; together they had stalked a crown for Anne; now it was hers, and they were both exhausted with the effort.

The relationship of mistress and lover was more exciting to a man of Henry’s temperament than that of wife and husband; though his conscience would never allow him to admit this. The one was full of excitement, with clandestine meetings, with doubts and fears, and all the ingredients of romance; the other was prosaic, arranged, and—most objectionable of all—inescapable, or almost. Gradually the relationship had been changing ever since January. She could still arouse in him moments of wild passion; she would always do that, she would always be to him the most attractive woman in his life; but he was essentially polygamous, and he possessed a wonderful and elastic conscience to explain all his actions.

Anne was clever; she could have held him; she could have kept him believing he had achieved happiness. But she had always been reckless, and the fight had tired her far more than it had Henry; she had more to gain and more to lose; now she felt she had reached her goal and needed to rest. Moreover she was able now to see this man she had married, from a different angle. She was no longer the humble subject climbing up to the dizzy heights on which he stood secure as King; she was level with him now, not a humble knight’s daughter, but a Queen looking at a King—and the closer view was less flattering to him. His youthful looks had gone. He was in his forties, and he had lived too well; he had done most things to excess, and this was apparent; stripped of his glittering clothes he was by no means wholesome; he had suffered the inevitable consequences of a promiscuous life. His oblique gaze at facts irritated Anne beyond endurance. She rebelled against his conscience; she looked at him too closely, and he knew she did. He had seen her lips curl at certain remarks of his; he had seen her face harden at some display of coarseness. This would enrage him, for he would remind himself that he was the son of a king, and that it was entirely due to him that she had gained her high eminence.

They quarreled; they were both too easily roused to anger to avoid it; but so far the quarrels were little more than tiffs, for she could still enchant him, and moreover he did not forget that she carried the Tudor heir. Anne did not forget it either; in fact it absorbed her; she was experiencing the abandonment of the mother—all else was of small importance, set beside the life that moved within her. She was obsessed by it; she wished to be left alone that she might dream of this child, this son, for whom she must wait for three long dreary months.

This was all very right, thought Henry; the child was all-important, but there was no need for her to change so completely. He rejoiced to see her larger; it was a goodly sight. The boy was well and happy inside her, and God speed his coming! But . . . she should not forget the baby’s father, as she appeared to do. She was languid, expressing no delight in the attentions he paid to her, preferring to talk of babies with her ladies than to have him with her. Henry was disappointed. He missed too their passionate lovemaking. He was in the forties; he could not expect to enjoy his manly vigor for many more years. Sometimes he felt quite old; then he would say to himself: “What I have endured these last years for her has done this to me; brought me a few years nearer the grave, I trow!” Then he would be indignant with her, indignant that she, while carrying his child, must deny him those blissful moments which he could enjoy with none as he could with her. He would think back over his faithfulness to her. This was astonishing; it amazed him. Ah, well, a man must be faithful to a mistress if he wishes to keep her, but a wife is a different matter altogether!

The thought took hold of Henry, haunting his mind. He thought of the days before Anne had come to Suffolk House; they had a piquancy, a charm, since the excitement of adventure is in its unexpectedness. “It is more pleasing to pluck an apple from the branch which you have seized, than to take one up from a graven dish.” There was truth enough in that, he assured himself, thinking of sudden amorous adventures.

There came a day in July when the rain was teeming down and there was little to do. One played the harp, one sang . . . but the day flagged, for he was uneasy in his mind. Affairs of state weighed heavily upon him. In spite of his separation from Rome, he was eager that the Pope should sanction his marriage; he was disappointed of this, for instead of the sanction there came an announcement that Cranmer’s sentence on Henry’s former marriage was to be annulled; unless, he was threatened, he left Anne before September and returned to Katharine, both he and she he called his new Queen would be excommunicated.

This was disquieting news which set Henry trembling; Anne’s defiance of Rome, her lack of superstitious dread, angered him against her, for he did not care that she should show more courage than he; although his conscience explained that his feeling was not fear but eagerness to assure himself that he had acted with the will of God. Some priests, particularly in the North, were preaching against the new marriage. At Greenwich, Friar Peyto had even had the temerity to preach before Henry and Anne, hinting at the awful judgment that awaited them. Cardinal Pole, who had decided it would be well to live on the Continent owing to his close relationship to the King, wrote reproachful letters abusing Anne. Henry did not trust the Spanish ambassador; the man was sly and insolent and over-bold; he had dared to ask Henry if he could be sure of having children, making a reference to the state of the kingly body which was outwardly manifested by a malignant sore on the leg, which refused to heal.

Henry had reason to believe that Chapuys had reported to his master on the state of English defenses; and if this were so, might he not advise the Emperor to make an attack?

Would a conquest of England be difficult for such a skilled general as Charles? Henry knew that most of his nobles—with perhaps the exception of Norfolk—would be ready to support Katharine’s side; the Scots were ever eager to be troublesome. Why should not Charles, on the pretext of avenging an ill-treated aunt, do that which would be of inestimable advantage to himself—subdue England? There was one gleam of hope in this prospect; Charles was fully occupied in his scattered possessions, and he was too cautious to stretch his already overstrained resources in another cause. Henry raged and fumed and said he would send Chapuys home, but that was senseless, he knew well; better to have the spy whose evil ways were known to him than another sent in his place who might be possessed of even greater cunning. Henry bottled up his indignation temporarily, holding in his anger, but storing it, nourishing it. The only brightness on the political horizon was that Francis had sent congratulations to both himself and Anne; Henry had invited the French King to sponsor his son, which Francis had cordially agreed to do. Henry felt that, once his son was born, the mass of the people—the element he feared most—would be so overjoyed that it would be forgotten that various unorthodox methods had been followed in order to bring about such a joyous event. Astrologers and physicians had assured him that there could be no doubt of the sex of the child, so all Henry needed to do was to wait for September; but never had a month seemed so long in coming, and it was but July, and wet. The King therefore felt himself in need of diversion.

It came in the voluptuous form of one of the ladies attending Anne. This girl was in complete contrast to her mistress, round-faced, possessed of large baby blue eyes, plump and inviting. No haughtiness there; no dignity; Henry was ever attracted by change.

She glanced at him as she flitted about the chamber, and Anne, absorbed in maternity, did not at first notice what was going on. The girl curtseyed to him, glanced sideways at him; he smiled at her, forgetting Chapuys and astute Charles, and all those who preached against him.

He came upon her suddenly in the quiet of a corridor. She curtseyed, throwing at him that bold glance of admiration which he remembered so well from the days before his thoughts had been given entirely to Anne. He kissed the girl; she caught her breath; he remembered that too; as though they were overwhelmed by him! He felt a king again; pleasant indeed to bestow favors like a king, instead of having to beg for them like a dog.

He left her though, for Anne still largely occupied his thoughts. There was none to be compared with Anne, and he was afraid of her still, afraid of her reactions should she discover any infidelity. He could not forget how she had gone back to Hever; moreover she was to bear him a son. He felt sentimental towards her still; but a kiss was nothing.

The weather cleared, and he felt better. August came. Invitations to the christening of the prince were made ready. Anne, languid on her couch, watched the King obliquely, wondering what gave him that secret look, noting the sly glances of her attendant, noting a certain covert boldness in the girl’s manner towards herself. Anne could not believe that he who had been faithful for so many years in the most difficult circumstances had so quickly lapsed, and at such a time, when she was to give him a son. But the secretiveness of him, that irritability towards herself which a man of his type would feel towards someone he had wronged or was about to wrong made her feel sure of what was afoot.

Anne was no patient Griselda, no Katharine of Aragon. She was furious, and the more so because her fury must be tinged with fear. What if history were to repeat itself! What if that which had happened to Queen Katharine was about to happen to Queen Anne! Would she be asked to admit that her marriage was illegal? Would she be invited to go into a nunnery? She must remember that she had no powerful Emperor Charles behind her.

She watched the King; she watched the girl. Henry was over-wrought; he drank freely; the days seemed endless to him; he was nervous and irritable sometimes, at others over-exuberant. But this was understandable, for the birth of a son was of the utmost importance since not only would it ensure the Tudor dynasty, but to Henry it would come like a sign from heaven that he had been right to displace Katharine.

Anne lived uncomfortably through the hot days, longing for the birth of her child. She felt upon her the eyes of all; she felt them to be waiting for that all-deciding factor, the birth of a male child. Her friends prayed for a son; her enemies hoped for a daughter or a still-born child.

One day at the end of August it seemed to her that the girl whom she watched with such suspicion was looking more sly and a trifle arrogant. She saw Henry give her a look of smoldering desire.

“Shall I endure this before my very eyes?” Anne asked herself. “Am I not Queen?”

She waited until Henry was alone in the chamber with her; then she said, her eyes blazing: “If you must amuse yourself, I would prefer you did not do it under my eyes and with one of my own women!”

Henry’s eyes bulged with fury. He hated being caught; he had had this matter out with his conscience; it was nothing, this light little affair with a wench who had doubtless lost her virginity long ago; it was hardly worth confessing. It was a light and airy nothing, entered into after the drinking of too much wine, little more than a dream.

“Am I to be defied by one wife,” he asked himself, “dictated to by another?”

He had had enough of this; he was the King, he would have her know. It was not for her to keep up her arrogance to him now.

As he struggled for words to express his indignation, one of Anne’s attendants entered; that did not deter him. It should be known throughout the court that he was absolute King, and that the Queen enjoyed her power through him.

He shouted: “You close your eyes, as your betters did before you!”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet; she lifted herself in the bed; angry retorts rose to her lips, but something in the face of the King subdued her suddenly, so that her anger left her; she had no room for any other emotion than deadly fear. His face had lost its flushed appearance too; his eyes peered out from his quivering flesh, suddenly cold and very cruel.

Then he continued to speak, slowly and deliberately: “You ought to know that it is in my power in a single instant to lower you further than I raised you up.”

He went from the room; she sank back, almost fainting. The attendant came to her hastily, ministering to her anxiously, knowing the deep humiliation that must have wounded one so proud. Had Anne been alone she would have retorted hotly; she would have flayed him with her tongue; but they were not alone—yet he had not cared for that! In the court her enemies would hear of this; they would talk of the beginning of the end of Anne Boleyn.

Her hands were cold and wet; she overcame a desire to burst into passionate tears. Then the child began to move inside her, reassuring her. Her son. Once he was born, she was safe, for Henry would never displace the mother of his son whatever the provocation.

Henry did not go near her again for several days. He found a fresh and feverish excitement in the knowledge that to be in lust was satisfying and more congenial to his nature than to be in love. The girl was a saucy wench, God knew, but ready enough, over-ready, to obey her King. To love was to beg and plead; to lust was but to demand satisfaction.

He thought of Anne often, sometimes when he was with the girl. His thoughts were so mixed he could not define them. Sometimes he thought, When the confinement’s over, she’ll be herself again. Then he thought of a lithesome girl leaning over a pond at Hever, a lovely woman entertaining him at Suffolk House. Anne, Anne . . . there is none on Earth as delightful as Anne! This is naught, Anne; this is forgotten once you are with me again.

Then at mass or confession his thoughts would be tinged with fear. Suppose the Almighty should show his displeasure by a daughter or a still-born child! Marriage with Katharine had been a succession of still-born children, because his marriage with Katharine had been no marriage. He himself had said that. What if his marriage with Anne should be no marriage either?

But God would show him, for God would always be ready to guide one who followed His laws and praised Him, as did Henry the Eighth of England.

Throughout the city the news was awaited. People in the barges that floated down the Thames called one to the other.

“Is the prince come yet then?”

There was scarcely a whisper against the new Queen; those who had been her most violent enemies thought of her now, not as the Queen, but as a mother.

“I heard her pains had started, poor lady . . .”

“They say his name will be Henry or Edward . . .”

Mothers remembered occasions when they had suffered as the Queen suffered now, and even those who cared nothing for motherhood were fond of pageantry. They remembered the coronation, when wine had flowed free from fountains. Pageants, feasting, rejoicing would mark the birth of a son to a king who had waited twenty-four years for it; it would be a greater event than a coronation.

“God save the little prince!” cried the people.

The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk scarcely slept at all, so eager was she for the event. She was full of pride and misgivings, assuring herself that Anne was a healthy girl, that the delivery must be effected efficiently, pushing to the back of her mind those fears which came from her knowledge of the King. Poor Katharine had had miscarriage after miscarriage; they said she was diseased, and whence did she come by such diseases? Might it not have been through close contact with His Majesty? One did not speak such thoughts, for it were treason to do so, but how could the most loyal subjects help their coming to mind! But Anne was a healthy girl; this was her first child. She had come safely through the nine months of pregnancy, and everything must be well.

In the orchard, sheltered by the trees whose fruit was beginning to ripen, Catherine Howard and Francis Derham lay in each other’s arms with scarcely a thought for the momentous events which would shape the course of history.

Francis said: “Why should they not consent to our marriage? It is true I am poor, but my birth is good.”

“They will assuredly consent,” murmured Catherine. “They must consent!”

“And why should it not be soon? When the Duchess is recovered from this excitement, she will surely listen to me, Catherine. Do you think that I might approach her?”

“Yes,” said Catherine happily.

“Then we are betrothed!”

“Yes.”

“Then call me husband.”

“Husband,” said Catherine, and he kissed her.

“I would we were away from here, wife, that at we were in our own house. I get so little opportunity for seeing you.”

“So little,” she sighed.

“And I hear that the Duchess’s ladies are unprincipled in some ways, that they are over-bold with men. I like it not that you should be among them.”

“I am safe,” she said, “loving thee.”

They kissed again, Catherine drew him closer, feeling that excessive excitement which physical contact with one who attracted her must always give her.

Derham kissed her fervently, enchanted by her as Manox had been; but he was genuinely in love with her, and his feelings were governed by affection as well as the need to gratify his senses. She was very young, but she was ready for passion. He was a reckless young man, courageous and virile; and Catherine’s obvious longing to complete their intimacy was so alluring that he—while tenderly thinking of her age—must seek to arrange it.

He insisted they would marry. He could think of nothing more delightful. They were really married, he told her, because according to the law of the Church it was only necessary for two free people to agree to a contract and it was made. It soothed his fears that she was too young, when he called her wife; when she called him husband, he was transported with joy.

He meant to be tactful and kind. He knew nothing of her experience with Manox. Catherine did not tell him, not because she wished to hide it, but because Manox no longer interested her. She had asked her grandmother if she might have a new music teacher, and the old lady, too full of court matters to care what her granddaughter did, had nodded, and when Catherine had named an ascetic, middle-aged man, her grandmother had nodded again. In any case the Duchess no longer sat as chaperon during the music lessons. Manox had almost passed from Catherine’s thoughts, except on those unpleasant occasions when he would try to see her—for he was furious that she had ended the affair so abruptly, blaming Mary Lassells for this and making no secret of his hatred and contempt for the girl. Catherine wished of course that she had never known Manox, but she was too blissful to think of much else but the completion of her love with Francis Derham.

“I have a plan,” said Derham.

“Tell me of it.”

“What if I were to ask Her Grace to take me into her house?”

“Dost think she would?” Catherine was trembling at the thought.

“I think she might.” He smiled complacently, remembering how on one occasion Her Grace had singled him out—as a most personable young man—for her special attention. “I can but try. Then we shall be under the same roof; then I may speak for you. Oh, Catherine, Catherine, how I long for that day!”

Catherine longed for it with equal intensity.

He almost whispered to her that they need not wait; why should they, when they were husband and wife? Catherine was waiting for him to say that; but he did not . . . yet. They lay on the grass, looking up at the ripening fruit.

“I shall never forget the day you first called me husband,” he said. “I shall remember it when I die!”

Catherine laughed, for death seemed far away and a most absurd topic for two young people in love.

“I shall never forget it either,” she told him, and turned her face to his. They kissed; they trembled; they yearned for each other.

“Soon,” he said, “I shall be in the Duchess’s house. Then I shall see you often . . . often.”

Catherine nodded.

On the gorgeous bed, which had been part of a French Prince’s ransom. Anne lay racked with the agony of childbirth. The King paced up and down in an adjoining room. He could hear her groans. How he loved her! For her groaning set his heart beating with fear that she would die. He was that same lover to whom news of her illness had been brought during the pestilence. “I would willingly endure half of what you suffer to cure you.” Memories of her came and went in his mind; her laughter, her gaiety; Anne, the center of attraction at the jousts and masques; sitting beside him watching the jousts in the tiltyard, so beautiful, so apart from all others that he found it difficult to turn his attention from her to the jousting; he thought of her in his arms, his love and his Queen.

He was filled with remorse for that lapse, for the quarrel which had upset her, and—this made him break out into a clammy sweat—might have had some effect on the birth of his son.

He paced up and down, suffering with her. How long? How long? The veins stood out on his forehead. “By God! If anything happens to her, blood will flow—that I swear!”

The girl with whom he had dallied recently looked in at the door, smiling; she had been sent to soothe him. He looked at her without recognizing her.

Up and down he went, straining his ears and then putting his hands over them to shut out the sound of Anne’s pain, His fear was suddenly swept away, for distinctly he heard the cry of a child, and in a second he was at the bedside, trembling with eagerness. In the chamber there was a hushed silence. The attendants were afraid to look at him. Anne lay white and exhausted, aware neither of him, nor her room, nor perhaps herself.

“What is it?” he shouted.

They hesitated, one looking at another, hoping that some other would take on the delicate task of breaking unpleasant news.

His face was purple; his eyes blazing. He roared in his anguish.

“A daughter!” His voice was almost a sob; he was defeated; he was humiliated.

He stood, his hands clenched, words pouring from his mouth, abuse and rage; and his eyes were on Anne, lying still on the bed. This to happen to him! What had he done to deserve it? What had he ever done to deserve it? Had he not always sought to do right? Had he not spent hours of labor, studying theology; had he not written A Glasse of the Truth? Had he not delved deep into this matter before he had taken action? Had he not waited for the promptings of his conscience? And for whom had he worked and suffered? Not for himself, but for his people, to save them from the rigors of civil war which during the last century had distressed and ravaged the land. For this he had worked, sparing himself not at all, defying the wrath of his simple people who could not be expected to understand his high motives. And this was his reward . . . a daughter!

He saw tears roll from Anne’s closed eyes; her face was white as marble; she looked as though all life had gone from her; those tears alone showed him that she had heard. And then suddenly his disappointment was pushed aside. She too had suffered deeply; she was disappointed as he was. He knelt down and put his arms about her.

He said earnestly: “I would rather beg from door to door than forsake you!”

When he had gone, she lay very still, exhausted by the effort of giving birth to her daughter, her mind unable to give her body the rest it needed. She had failed. She had borne a daughter, not a son! This then was how Katharine of Aragon had felt when Mary was born. The hope was over; the prophecies of the physicians and the soothsayers had proved to be meaningless. “It will be a boy,” they had assured her; and then . . . it was a girl!

Her heartbeats, which had been sluggish, quickened. What had he said? “I would rather beg from door to door than forsake you!” Forsake you! Why should he have said that? He would surely only have said it if the thought of forsaking her had been in his mind! He had forsaken Katharine.

Her cheeks were wet; then she must have shed tears. I could never live in a nunnery, she thought, and she remembered how she had once believed that Katharine ought to have gone to such a place. How different the suggestion seemed when applied to oneself! She had never understood Katharine’s case until now.

Someone bent over her and whispered: “Your Majesty must try to sleep.”

She slept awhile and dreamed she was plain Anne Boleyn at Blickling; she was experiencing great happiness, and when she awoke she thought, Happiness then is a matter of comparison; I never knew such complete happiness, for my body was in agony and now I scarce know I have a body, and that in itself is enough.

Fully conscious, she remembered that she was no longer a girl at Blickling, but a queen who had failed in her duty of bearing a male heir. She remembered that throughout the palace—throughout the kingdom—they would now be talking of her future, speculating as to what effect it would have upon her relationship with the King. Her enemies would be rejoicing, her friends mourning. Chapuys would be writing gleefully to his master. Suffolk would be smiling, well content. Katharine would pray for her; Mary would gloat: She has failed! She has failed! What will the King do now?

The sleep had strengthened her; her weakness of spirit was passing. She had fought to gain her place, she would fight to keep it.

“My baby . . .” she said, and they brought the child and laid it in her arms.

The red, crumpled face looked beautiful to her, because the child was hers; she held it close, examining it, touching its face lightly with her fingers, murmuring, “Little baby . . . my little baby!”

It mattered little to her now that the child was a girl, for, having seen her, she was convinced that there never had been such a beautiful child—so how could she wish to change it! She held her close, loving her and yet feeling fearful for her, for was not the child a possible Queen of England? No, there would be sons to follow. The first child had been a girl; therefore she would never sit on the throne of England, because Anne would have sons, many sons. Still, the mother must tremble for her child, must wish now that she were not the daughter of a king and queen. Suppose this baby had been born in some other home than royal Greenwich, where her sex would not have been a matter of such great importance. How happy she would have been then! There would have been nothing to think of but tending the child.

They would have taken the baby from her, but she would not let her go. She wanted her with her, to hold her close, to protect her.

She thought of Mary Tudor’s fanatical eyes. How the birth of this child would add fuel to the fierce fires of Mary’s resentment! Another girl to take her place, when she had lost it merely by being a girl! Before, there had been many a skirmish with Mary Tudor; now there must be deciding warfare between her and Queen Anne. For what if there were no more children! What if the fate of Queen Anne was that of Queen Katharine? Then . . . when the King was no more, there would be a throne for this child, a throne which would be coveted most ardently by Mary Tudor; and might not the people of England think Mary had the greater claim? Some considered that Katharine was still Queen, and that this newly born child was the bastard, not Mary Tudor.

“Oh, baby,” murmured Anne, “what a troublesome world it is that you have been born into!” Fiercely she kissed the child. “But it shall be as happy for you as I can make it. I would kill Mary Tudor rather than that she should keep from you that which is your right!”

One of the women bent over the bed.

“Your Majesty needs to rest . . .”

Hands took the baby; reluctantly Anne let her go.

She said: “She shall be called Elizabeth, after my mother and the King’s.”

The court was tense with excitement. In lowered tones the birth of Elizabeth was discussed, in state apartments, in the kitchens; women weeding in the gardens whispered together. In the streets, the people said: “What now? This is God’s answer!” Chapuys was watchful, waiting; he sounded Cromwell. Cromwell was noncommittal, cool. He felt that the King was as yet too fond of the lady to desire any change in their relationship. He was unlike Wolsey; Wolsey shaped the King’s policy while he allowed the King to believe it was his own; Cromwell left the shaping to the King, placing himself completely at the royal disposal. Whatever the King needed, Thomas Cromwell would provide. If he wished to disinherit Mary, Cromwell would find the most expeditious way of doing it; if the King wished to discard Anne, Cromwell would work out a way in which this could be done. Cromwell’s motto was, “The King is always right.”

The King still desired Anne ardently, but though he could be the passionate lover, he wished her to realize that it was not hers to command but to obey. A mistress may command, a wife must be submissive. Yet he missed his mistress; he even felt a need to replace her. He could not look upon Anne—young, beautiful and desirable—as he had looked on Katharine. And yet it seemed to him that wives are always wives; one is shackled to them by the laws of holy church, and to be shackled is a most unpleasant condition. There was an element of spice in sin, which virtue lacked; and even though a man had a perfectly good answer to offer his conscience, the spice was there. Anne could no longer threaten to return home; this was her home, the home of which she was indubitably master. She had given him a daughter—a further proof that she was not all he had believed her to be when he had pursued her so fanatically.

And so, in spite of his still passionate desire for her, when this was satisfied he would quickly change from lover into that mighty figure, King and master.

This was apparent very soon after Elizabeth’s birth. Anne wanted to keep the child with her, to feed her herself, to have her constantly in her care. Apart from her maternal feelings which were strong, she feared ill might befall her daughter through those enemies whom the child would inherit from the mother.

Seeing his daughter’s cradle in the chamber which he shared with Anne, the King was startled.

“How now!” he growled. “What means this?”

“I would have her with me,” said Anne, used to command, continuing to do so.

“You would have her with you!” he repeated ominously.

“Yes. And I shall feed her myself, for I declare I shall trust no one else with this task.”

The King’s face was purple with rage.

He stamped to the door and called to a startled maid of honor. She came in, trembling.

“Take the child away!” he roared.

The girl looked from the King to the Queen; the Queen’s face was very pale, but she did not speak. She was trembling, remembering what he had said before the child’s birth; at that time he had not waited until they were alone. “You ought to know that it is in my power in a single instant to lower you further than I raised you up!” And later, “I would rather beg from door to door than forsake you.” He cared not what he said before whom; he was so careless of her feelings that it mattered not to him if, in the court, people speculated as to whether her influence was waning. Therefore she watched the girl remove the baby, and said nothing.

“She would disturb our rest!” said the King.

When they were alone, Anne turned on him fiercely.

“I wished to keep her with me. I wished to feed her myself. What could it matter . . .”

He looked at her squarely. “Remember,” he said slowly, “that I lifted you up to be Queen of England. I ask that you do not behave as a commoner.”

His voice matched his eyes for coldness; she had never noticed how very cold they could be, how relentless and cruel was the small mouth.

Still trembling, she turned away from him, holding her head high, realizing that she, who a short while ago would have blazed at him demanding that her wishes be gratified, now dared do nothing but obey.

The King watched; her hair loose about her shoulders, she reminded him suddenly of the girl in the Hever rose garden. He went to her and laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Come, Anne!” he said, and turning her face to his kissed her. Hope soared in her heart then; she still had power to move him; she had accepted defeat too easily. She smiled.

“You were very determined about that!” she said, trying to infuse a careless note into her voice, for she was afraid to insist on keeping Elizabeth with her, and realized the folly of showing fear to one who was, naturally a bully.

“Come, sweetheart!” His voice was thick with the beginnings of passion; she knew him so well; she recognized his moods. “A queen does not suckle her babes. Enough of this!” He laughed. “We have a daughter; we must get ourselves a boy!”

She laughed with him. As he caressed her, her thoughts moved fast. She had believed that, with the birth of her child, her great fight would be over; she would sink back, refreshed by new homage, into a security which could not be shaken. But Fate had been unkind; she had given the King, not that son who would have placed her so securely on the throne, but a daughter. The fight was not over; it was just beginning; for what had gone before must be a skirmish compared with what must follow. She would need all her skill now, since the very weapons which had won for her her first victories were grown blunt; and it was now not only for herself that she must fight.

How she pitied Katharine of Aragon, who had gone through it all before her! Who was still going through it; a veteran whose weapons were endurance and tenacity. Anne would have need of equal endurance, equal tenacity, for she fought in the opposite camp. She was a mother now; she was a tigress who sees her cub in mortal danger. Katharine of Aragon she had thought of as a pitiable woman, Mary as a willful, outspoken girl; now they were her bitterest enemies, and they stood on their guard, waiting to dishonor her daughter.

She returned Henry’s kisses.

He said: “Anne, Anne, there’s no one like you Anne!”

And hot anger rose within her, for she sensed that he was comparing her with the woman whom he had dallied with before her delivery. Once she would have repulsed him, stormed at him, told him what she thought; now she must consider; she must lure him afresh, she must enchant him. It would be more difficult now, but she would do it, because it was imperative that she should.

As he lay beside her, she entwined her fingers in his.

“Henry,” she said.

He grunted.

Words trembled on her lips. What if she asked to have the baby in! No, that would be unwise; she could not make conditions now. She must tread carefully; she was only the King’s wife now. The Queen of England lacked the power of Anne Rochford and the Marchioness of Pembroke; but the Queen had all the cunning of those ladies, and she would laugh yet in the faces of her enemies who prophesied her destruction.

“Henry, now that we have a child, would it not be well to declare Mary illegitimate? We know well that she is, but it has never been so stated.”

He considered this. He was feeling a little hurt with Mary, who had applauded and supported her mother ever since the divorce had been thought of. Mary was an obstinate girl, an unloving daughter who had dared to flout her father, the King.

“By God!” he said. “I’ve been too lenient with that girl!”

“Indeed you have! And did I not always tell you so; you must announce her illegitimacy at once, and every man of note in the country must agree to it.”

“If they do not,” growled Henry, “’twill be the worse for them!”

She kissed his cheek; she had been foolish to worry. She still had the power to manage him.

He said: “We must go cautiously. I fear the people will not like it. They have made a martyr of Katharine, and of Mary too.”

She did not attach over-much importance to the will of the people. They had shouted: “We’ll have no Nan Bullen!” And here she was, on the throne in spite of them. The people gathered together and grumbled; sometimes they made disturbances; sometimes they marched together with flaming torches in their hands. . . . Still, they should not pay too much attention to the people.

“Mary is a stupid, wayward girl,” said Anne. And as the King nodded in agreement, she added: “She should be compelled to act as maid to Elizabeth. She should be made to understand who is the true Princess!”

Then she threw herself into his arms, laughing immoderately. He was pleased with her; he was sure that ere long they would have a healthy boy.

Sir Thomas More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, was full of fear, for peace had been slowly filched from her home. April was such a pleasant month at Chelsea; in the garden of her father’s house, where she had spent her happy childhood and continued to live with her husband Will Roper, the trees were blossoming; the water of the Thames lapped gently about the privy stairs; and how often had Margaret sat on the wooden seat with her father, listening to his reading to her and her brother and sisters, or watching him as he discoursed most wittily with his good friend Erasmus. Change had crept into the house like a winter fog, and Margaret’s heart was filled with a hatred alien to it; the hatred was for one whom she thought of as a brown girl, a girl with a sixth nail on her left hand and a disfiguring mark on her throat, a girl who had bewitched the King, who had cut off England from the Pope, and who had placed Margaret’s father in mortal danger.

When Anne Boleyn had gone to court from Hever Castle, the first shadow had been cast over the Chelsea house. Her father would reprove her for her hatred, but Margaret could not subdue it. She was no saint, she reasoned. She had talked of Anne Boleyn most bitterly to her sisters, Elizabeth and Cecily; and now, sitting in the garden watching the river, calm today, bringing with it the mingled smells of tar and seaweed and rotting wood and fish, with the willow trees abudding and drooping sadly over it, she felt fear in the very air. When her adopted sister, Mercy, came running out to sit with her awhile, she had started violently and begun to tremble, fearing Mercy had brought news of some disaster. When her stepsister, Alice, appeared beside her, she felt her knees shake, though Alice had merely come to ask if Margaret would care to help her feed the peacocks.

Margaret recalled this house a few years back; she remembered seeing her father in the heart of his family, reading to them in long summer evenings out of doors, saying prayers in the house; and so often with a joke on his lips. Her father was the center of his household; they all moved round him; were he removed, what then of the More family? ’Twould be like Earth without the sun, thought Margaret. She remembered writing letters to him when he was away from home on an embassy. He had been proud of her, showing her letters to the great scholar, Reginald Pole, who had complimented him on possessing such a daughter. He had told her this, for he knew well when a compliment might be passed to do the object good, and not to foster pride. He was a saint. And what so often was the end of saints? They became martyrs. Margaret wept softly, controlledly, for she dared not show the others she had wept; it would displease her father. Why must she now recall the memories of her childhood and all those sunny days in which her father moved, the center of her life, the best loved one? Fear made her do it; fear of what was coming swiftly towards him. What was waiting for this adored father, tomorrow or the next day, or the next? Gloom had settled in the house; it was in the eyes of her stepmother, usually not eager to entertain it, usually eager to push it away; but it had come too close to be pushed away. Her sisters . . . were they over-gay? Their husbands laughed a little louder than was their wont; and in the garden, or from the windows of the house, their eyes would go to the river as though they were watching, watching for a barge that might come from Westminster or the Tower, and stop at the privy steps of Sir Thomas More’s garden.

Her father was the calmest of the household; though often he would look at them all sadly and eagerly, as though he would remember the details of each face that he might recall them after he would be unable to see them. A great calm had settled upon him of late, as though he had grappled with a problem and found the solution. He was a great man, a good man; and yet he was full of fun. One would have expected a saint to be a little melancholy, not fond of partaking of pleasure nor seeing those about him doing so. He was not like that; he loved to laugh, to see his children laugh; he was full of kindly wit. Oh, there was never such a one as Father! sighed Margaret.

He was fifty-six years of age now, and since he had given up the chancellorship he had looked every year of it. As a boy he had been taken into the household of Cardinal Morton who was then Archbishop of Canterbury; from thence he had gone to Oxford, become a lawyer, gone into Parliament, had lectured on the subject of theology, and was soon recognized as a brilliant young man. There was in him the stuff of the martyr; at one time he had come very near to becoming a monk, but he decided to marry. “Did you ever regret that decision, Father?” Margaret once asked, and he laughed and pretended to consider; and she had been filled with happiness to know he did not. That was well, for if ever a man was meant to be a father, that man was Sir Thomas More. There was never such a family as ours, thought Margaret. We were happy . . . happy . . . before Anne Boleyn went to court. Wolsey had admired Sir Thomas, had made use of him; the King had met him, taken a liking to him, sought his help in denouncing the doctrines of Luther. Thus, when Wolsey was discarded, it was on this man that the King’s choice fell. “More shall be Chancellor. More shall have the Great Seal of England,” said the King. “For rarely liked I a man better!” And so he achieved that high office; but he was never meant to go to court. Had he not remarked that he would serve God first, the Prince second? He would ever say that which would lead to trouble, because honesty was second nature to him. He was a saint; please God he need never show the world that he could be a martyr too! Margaret had been frightened when he became Chancellor, knowing his views on the divorce.

“Anne Boleyn will never be Queen,” she had said often enough to her husband, Will. “How can she be, when the Pope will not sanction the divorce?”

“Indeed,” had answered Will, “you speak truth, Meg. How can that be! A man who has one wife may not marry another.”

She had been afraid for Will then, for he was interested in the new faith and would read of it secretly, being unsure in his mind; she trembled, for she could not have borne that her beloved father and her dear husband should not be in agreement on these matters. She had discussed Martin Luther and his doctrines with her father, for he was ever ready to talk with her on any serious subject, holding that though she was a woman she had the power to think and reason.

“Father,” she had said, “there have been times when I have heard you discourse against the ways of Rome.”

“That I have done, Meg. But this is how I see it, daughter. Rome’s ways are not always good, but I hold the things we value most in life may best be held to under Rome.”

She had not dared to tell him of Will’s flirting with the new faith. She did not understand it fully. She supposed that Will, being young, would prefer to try the new, and her father, being not so young, must like the old ways best. She had thought it a great tragedy when she discovered this tendency in Will; but what was that, compared with this which threatened!

The giving up of the Great Seal had been like the first clap of thunder that heralds an unexpected storm on a fine summer’s day. After that there was quiet, until that April day a year ago, when three bishops came to the house one morning to bring twenty pounds for his dress, that he might attend the coronation of her who was set up as Queen, and who could never be accepted as Queen in this household. He had refused that invitation. She shivered at the memory. A few days later that refusal brought forth its results; he was charged with bribery and corruption. A ridiculous charge against the most honest man in England; but nothing was too ridiculous to bring against one so prominent who failed to do honor to Anne Boleyn. And recently there had come a further and more alarming charge; a mad nun of Kent, named Elizabeth Barton, had been shocking Anne’s supporters and heartening those of Katharine with her lurid prophecies of the evil fates which would await the King and Anne, should they continue in their ungodly ways. The rightful Queen, declared the nun, was Katharine. She had seen visions; she went into trances and then gave voice to prophecies which she declared were put into her mouth by the Holy Ghost. As she had been in touch with Queen Katherine and the Emperor Charles, she was considered dangerous, but on her arrest and examination in the Star Chamber she had confessed she was an imposter. And Sir Thomas More was accused of having instigated this woman to pretend the future had been revealed to her, that she might frighten the King into taking back Katharine and abandoning Anne.

Margaret remembered how they had sat about the table, pretending to eat, pretending it would be well, telling each other that the innocence of the guiltless was their best defence. He had been taken before the Council; he had been questioned by the new Archbishop, by His Grace of Norfolk—whom she feared for his cold eyes and his hard, cruel mouth—before Thomas Cromwell, whose thick hands looked as though they would not hesitate to turn on one slow to answer his questions; his fish-like eyes held no warmth, only cunning. But he was clever as well as good, this most loved father; he had outwitted them, for his wit was sharper than theirs; and she had heard that there was none equal to him apart from Cranmer, and on this occasion Cranmer was on the wrong side, so right must prevail. They had dismissed him in exasperation, for they could not trip him; and it was his arguments, she was sure, that had dumbfounded them, not theirs him.

Will had traveled down with him, and told her about this afterwards. Will had said that he knew all must be well, and rejoiced to see him so merry.

Her father had replied that truly he was merry, and would Will know why? He had taken the first step and the first step was the hardest. He had gone so far with those lords that without great shame he could never turn back.

This then had been the cause of his merriment. The step was taken down that path which he believed to be the right one; but what a path, where danger lurked at every turn! And what was at the end of it? That had happened a year ago, and now he had come far along that path; and this gloom which hung over them now—did it mean that he was nearing its end?

Mercy was running out to the garden now.

“Meg!” she called. “Meg!” And Margaret dared not turn to look at her, so strong was her fear, so numbing the suspense.

Mercy’s pleasant face was hot with running.

“Dinner, Meg! Of what are you thinking . . . dreaming here? We are all waiting for you. Father sent to call you. . . .”

She thought she had never heard more beautiful words than those, and their beauty was in their sweet normality. “Father sent to call you.” She went with Mercy into the house.

They sat round the large table, her stepmother Alice, Cecily and her husband Giles, Elizabeth and her husband, John and his wife, Mercy and Clement, Margaret and Will. And there at the head of the table he sat, his face more serene than any, as though he were unaware of the dark patches of sorrow that hung about his house. He was laughing, pretending to chide her for daydreaming, giving her a lecture on the evils of unpunctuality which was spattered with fun; and she laughed with the rest, but not daring to meet his eyes for fear he should see the tears there. He knew why she would not look at him, for they were closer than any in the household, and though he loved well his family, it was his daughter Meg who was closest to his heart. So the others laughed, for he was a sorcerer where laughter was concerned, conjuring it up out of nowhere, but not for her; she was too close to the magician, she knew his tricks, she saw the sleight of hand; she knew the merry eyes watched the window, listened for a sign.

It came with a loud knocking on the outer door.

Gillian, their little maid, came running in, her mouth open. There was one outside who must see Sir Thomas.

Sir Thomas arose, but the man was already in the room. He carried the scroll in his hands. He bowed most courteously. His face was sad, as though he did not greatly love his mission, which was a command that Sir Thomas must appear next day before the Commissioners in order to take the Oath of Supremacy.

There was silence round the table; Margaret stared at the dish before her, at the worn wood of the table which she remembered so well, since she had sat at this particular place for as long as she could recall. She wished the birds would not sing so loudly, showing they did not know this was a day of doom; she wished the sun would not shine so hotly on her neck for it made her feel she would be sick. She wanted perfect clarity of mind to remember forever each detail of that well loved face.

Her stepmother had turned deathly pale; she looked as if she would faint. The whole family might have been petrified; they did not move; they sat and waited.

Margaret looked at her father; his eyes had begun to twinkle. No, no! she thought. Not now! I cannot bear that you should turn this into a joke. Not even for them. Not now!

But he was smiling at her, imploring her. Margaret! You and I, we understand. We have to help one another.

Then she arose from the table and went to the messenger, and looking closely at his face, she said: “Why . . . Dick Halliwell! Mother . . . Everybody . . . ’Tis only Dick!”

And they fell upon her father, chiding him, telling him he went too far with his jokes. And there he was, laughing among them, believing that it is well not to look at unhappiness until it is close upon you, having often said that once you have passed it, every day lends distance between it and yourself.

Margaret went to her nursery where she stayed with her small daughter, finding solace in the charm of the child and thinking of the child’s future when she would have children of her own, so that she might not think of this day and the days that would immediately follow it.

Later, hearing voices beneath her window, she looked out and saw her father walking below with the Duke of Norfolk who, she guessed, had come to have a word with him about the morrow. Margaret, her hand on her heart, as though she feared those below would hear its wild beating, listened to their voices which were wafted up to her.

“’Tis perilous striving with princes,” said His Grace. “I could wish you as a friend to incline to the King’s pleasure. “

Then she heard her father’s voice, and it seemed to her that it held little of sorrow. “There will be only this difference between Your Grace and me, that I shall die today and you tomorrow.”

That night, she could not sleep. Death seemed already to be hovering over the house. She recalled what she had heard of those committed to the Tower; she thought of that gloomy prison and compared it with this happy home. He would say: “All these years of happiness have I had; I should be grateful to have known them, not sorrowful that because I have loved them well, I now must grieve the more to lose them.”

She wept bitter tears, and took her child in her arms, seeking comfort from that small body. But there was no comfort for Margaret Roper. Death hung over the house, waiting to snatch its best loved member.

He left next day. She watched him go down the privy steps with Will, his head held high; already he looked a saint. He did not cast a look behind him; he would have them all believe that soon he would be returning to them.

Catherine Howard was in the orchard, looking through the trees at the river. She was plumper than she had been almost a year ago when she had first met Francis Derham at the coronation. Now she deplored the state of her clothes, longed for rich materials, for ribands and flowers to adorn her hair.

She was not yet thirteen years old and looked seventeen—a plump, ripe, seventeen; she was very pretty, very gay, fond of laughter; in love with Francis.

Life was beautiful, she thought, and promised to be more so. Francis was husband to her, she wife to him. One day—and that not far distant—they would be so in earnest.

As she stood gazing at the river, a pair of hands were placed over her eyes; she gave a little cry of pleasure, assured this was Francis. Often he came to her, and they met here in the orchards, for he was still of her uncle’s house.

“Guess who!” said the loved and familiar voice.

“Guess!” she cried shrilly. “I do not have to guess—I know!”

She pulled away his hands and swung round to face him; they kissed passionately.

He said: “Such good news I have today, Catherine! I can scarce wait to tell you.”

“Good news!”

“The best of news. I hope that you will agree that it is.”

“Tell me, tell me! You must tell me.”

He stood, surveying her, laughing, harboring his secret, longing so deeply for the moment of revelation that he must keep it back, savoring afresh the pleasure it would give him to tell her.

“Very well, I will tell you, Catherine. Her Grace is to have a new gentleman usher. What do you think his name is?”

“Francis . . . you!”

He nodded.

“Then you will be here . . . under this very roof! This is wonderful news, Francis.”

They embraced.

“It will be so much simpler to meet, Catherine.”

She was smiling. Yes, indeed, it would be much easier to meet. There would be many opportunities of which he did not as yet dream.

She was flushed with pleasure, bright-eyed, dreaming of them.

Some young ladies and gentlemen came upon them kissing there. Among them was Francis’s great friend Damport.

Francis and Catherine broke free on seeing them, and were greeted with laughter. One of the young men said in mock dismay: “You often kiss Mrs. Catherine Howard, Derham. Is it not very bold of you?”

Derham answered: “Who should hinder me from kissing my wife?”

“I trow this matter will come to pass!” said one of the ladies.

“What is that?” asked Derham.

“Marry! That Mr. Derham shall have Mrs. Catherine Howard.”

Derham laughed with pleasure. “By St. John!” he cried. “You may guess twice and guess worse!”

They were all laughing merrily, when Catherine broke up their mirth by pointing to a barge that went down the river.

“Look ye all!” she cried. “Is that not Sir Thomas More!”

They all fell silent, thinking of the man. They knew he had come near the block when the nun of Kent had burned for her heresies. What now? they wondered, and a gloom was cast over their merriment. They watched the barge pass along the river on its way to Westminster; and when it was out of sight, they sought to laugh again, but they found they had no mirth in them.

Jane Rochford’s brief sojourn in the Tower had frightened her considerably. There, in her prison, as she looked down on the river at the pomp of the coronation, she had realized that only her own folly had brought her to this pass, and that in future she must be wiser. She would always hate Anne, but that was no reason why she should shout the dangerous fact abroad. Her short incarceration had been in the nature of a warning to herself and others, but she came out chastened, determined to curb her hysterical jealousy. She apologized to Anne, who accepted her apology, her dislike for Jane being but mild, and she thinking her too colorless to feel much interest in her. So Jane came back to court as attendant to Anne, and though they were never even outwardly friends, there was a truce between them.

It was about a year after the coronation when Jane, who had a habit of discovering the secrets of those around her, made a great discovery.

There was among Anne’s attendants a young girl of some beauty, of modest, rather retiring demeanor, somewhat self-effacing; a member of what had come to be known as the anti-Boleyn faction—that set which had held out for Katherine, and were quiet now, though seeming to be watching and waiting for a turn in events.

Jane had intercepted a glance the King had given this girl, and she had felt a deep exultation. Could it be, wondered Jane, that the King was contemplating taking a mistress . . . that he had already been unfaithful to Anne? The thought made Jane laugh aloud when she was alone. How foolish she had been to murmur against Anne! What a poor sort of revenge, that merely put oneself into the Tower! Revenge should be taken subtly; she had learned that now.

How amusing to carry the news to Anne, to falter, to shed a tear, to murmur: “I am afraid I have some terrible news for you. I am not certain that I should tell . . . I am grieved that it should fall to my lot to bring you such news . . .”

She must watch; she must peep; she must go cautiously. She listened at doors; she hid behind curtains. She was really very bold, for well she knew what the wrath of the King could be like. But it was worth it; she discovered what she had hoped to discover.

She then must turn over in her mind how she would use this. She could go to Anne; she could have the story dragged from her seemingly reluctant lips; it would do her good to see the proud eyes flash, the anger burn in those cheeks, to see haughty Anne humiliated. On the other hand, what if she went to George with the news? She would have his complete attention; she would have his approval, as he would say she had done right in coming to him. She could not make up her mind what she wanted most, and she must do so quickly, for there were others in the court who pried and peeped, and would be only too glad to have the pleasure of doing that which she had worked for.

In the end she went to George.

“George, I have something to tell you. I am afraid. I hardly know what to do. Perhaps you can advise me.”

He was not very interested, she noticed with a sudden jealous rage; he thought it was her own affair. But wait until he learned it concerned his sister Anne!

“The King is indulging in a love affair with one of Anne’s ladies.”

George, who had been writing when she came in, hardly looked up from his work. He was perturbed by this news, but not greatly. Knowing the King, he considered such affairs inevitable; they were bound to come sooner or later. The main point was that Anne should realize this and not irritate the King further than he was already irritated by the birth of a daughter. If she remained calm, understanding, she could keep her hold on him; if she were jealous, demanding, she might find herself in a similar position to that of Katharine. He would warn her to treat this matter with the lightness it deserved.

“Well,” said Jane, “do you not think it was clever of me to have discovered this before most?”

He looked at her with distaste. She could not hide the triumph in her eyes. He pictured her, spying; he discovered early in their married life that she had a gift for spying. And now she was all excitement, happy—and showing it—because she had knowledge which was certain to hurt Anne.

“I am sure,” he said, “that you enjoyed making the discovery and were clever in doing so.”

“What mean you?” she demanded.

“Just what I say, Jane.”

He stood up, and would have walked past her; she stopped him, putting her hands on his coat.

“I thought to please you, George. I wish I had gone straight to Anne now.”

He was glad she had not done that. Anne was nervous; she was irritable; she was inclined to do the first rash thing that came into her head these days.

He forced himself to smile at Jane. He patted her hand.

“I am glad you told me first.”

She pouted.

“You seemed angry with me a moment ago. Why, George? Why? Why does everything I do anger you?”

He could feel blowing up, one of those scenes which he dreaded. He said: “Of course I was not angry. You imagine these things.”

“You were angry because you think she will be hurt. It does not matter that I risk my life . . .”

“To spy on the King!” he finished. He burst into sudden laughter. “By God, Jane, I should like to have seen His Majesty, had he come upon you peeping through a crack in the door!”

She stamped her foot; her face was white with rage.

“You find this comic!” she said.

“Well, in a measure. The King, taking his guilty pleasure, and you doing that for which you have a perfect genius . . . spying, congratulating yourself . . .”

“Congratulating myself!”

“Oh, come! I swear I never saw you so pleased with anything.”

Her lips trembled; tears came into her eyes.

“I know I’m not clever, but why should you laugh at everything I do!”

“Everything?” he said, laughing. “I assure you, Jane, that it is only on rare occasions that I can laugh at what you do.”

She turned on him angrily.

“Perhaps you will not find this such a laughing matter when I tell you who the lady is!”

He was startled now, and she had the joy of swing that she had all his attention.

“I forget her name. She is so quiet, one scarcely notices her. She is a friend of Chapuys; she is of those who would very gladly see the Queen displaced from the throne . . .”

She saw now that he was deeply perturbed; this was not merely a king’s light love affair; this was high politics. It was very likely that the girl had been primed to do this by the enemies of Anne.

George began to pace up and down; Jane sat in a window seat, watching him. Quite suddenly he went towards the door, and without a glance at Jane strode from the room. Jane wanted to laugh; but there was no laughter in her; she covered her face with her hands and began to cry.

George went to Anne. She was in her room, reading quietly, making marks with her thumbnail at those passages which she meant Henry to read. She was interesting herself in theology, because the subject interested him. She was trying now to bind him to her in every way she knew; she was uneasy; she thought often of Katharine and what had happened to her; she now wondered why she had not previously been more sympathetic towards Henry’s first Queen. Bitterly she would laugh at herself; did she not understand the old Queen’s case because her own was becoming distressingly similar?

“You look alarmed, George,” she said, laying aside her book.

“I have alarming news.”

“Tell me quickly.” She gave a somewhat hysterical laugh. “I think I am prepared for anything.”

“The King is philandering.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“I cannot say I am greatly surprised, George.”

“This is no ordinary philandering. It is important, when we consider who the girl is.”

“Who?”

“Jane does not remember her name.”

“Jane!”

They exchanged glances of understanding.

“Jane made it her affair to discover this matter,” said George. “This time I think Jane has done us a service. She described the girl as meek and mild as milk.”

“Ah!” cried Anne. “I can guess who she is!”

“She is of our enemies,” said George. “It may well be that she has been made to do this to work your ruin, Anne.”

Anne stood up, her cheeks flaming.

“She shall be banished from the court! I myself will see her. She shall come to me at once . . . I . . .”

He lifted a restraining hand.

“Anne, you terrify me. These sudden rages . . .”

“Sudden! Rages! Have I not good cause . . .”

“You have every cause in the world, Anne, to go carefully. You must do nothing rash; everything you do is watched; everything you say is listened to. The throne shakes under you! You must say nothing of this to the king; you must feign ignorance for a while. We must go secretly and in great quiet, for this is no ordinary light flirtation.”

“There are times,” she said, “when I feel I should like nothing better than to walk out of the palace and never set eyes on the King again.”

“Be of good cheer. We’ll think of something. There is one point you must not forget: Give no sign to the King that you know anything. We will, between us, think of a plan.”

“It is so . . . humiliating!” she cried. “By my faith! I have suffered more indignities since I have been the Queen than I ever did before.”

“One of the penalties of being Queen, Anne! Promise . . . promise you will go cautiously!”

“Of course, of course! Naturally I shall . . .”

“No,” he said, with a little grimace, “not naturally, Anne; most unnaturally! Remember Mary . . .”

“What of Mary?”

“You know well to what I refer. How could you have been so wild, so foolish, as to say that if the King went to France and you were Regent, you would find a reason for putting Mary out of the way!”

“This girl maddens me. She is foolish, obstinate . . . and . . .”

“That we well know, but the greater foolishness was yours, Anne, in making such unwise statements.”

“I know . . . I know. And you do well to warn me.”

“I warn you now. Remember previous follies, and keep in good temper with the King.”

“I had thought he seemed more tender of late,” she said, and began to laugh suddenly. “To think it was naught but his guilty conscience!”

“Ah!” said George. “He was ever a man of much conscience. But, Anne, he is simple; you and I know that, and together we can be frank. He has great pride in himself. His verses . . . If he thought we did not consider them the best ever written in his court, he would be ready to have our heads off our shoulders!”

“That he would! He has indeed great pride in himself and all his works. George . . .” She looked over her shoulder. “There is none other to whom I could say this.” She paused, biting her lips, her eyes searching his face. “Katharine had a daughter, and then . . . all those miscarriages! George, I wonder, might it not be that the King cannot breed sons?”

He stared at her.

“I understand not,” he said.

“Not one son,” she said, “but Richmond. And Richmond . . . have you noticed? There is a delicate air about him; I do not think he will live to a great age. He is the King’s only son. Then there is Mary who is normal, but Mary is a girl and they say that girls survive at birth more easily than boys. There is my own Elizabeth; she is also a girl . . .” She covered her face with her hands. “And all those still-born boys, and all those boys who lived to breathe for an hour or so before they died . . . George, was it due to any weakness in Katherine, think you, or was it . . . ?”

He silenced her with a look. He read the terror behind her words.

She said in a whisper: “He is not wholly well . . . The place on his leg . . .” She closed her eyes and shivered. “One feels unclean . . .” She shivered again. “George, what if . . . he . . . cannot have sons?”

He clenched his hands, begging her with his eyes to cease such talk. He got up and strode to the door. Jane was in the corridor, coming towards the room. He wondered, had she heard that? Had she heard him rise from his seat and stride to the door? Had she retreated a few paces from the door, and then, just as it opened, commenced to walk leisurely towards it? He could not tell from her face; her eyes glistened; she had been weeping. It seemed to him that she was always weeping. He would have to be careful with her; he was sure she could be dangerous.

“Oh . . . Jane . . . I was just telling Anne . . .”

Anne threw a haughty glance at her sister-in-law, but Jane did not care, as George was smiling at her.

“Come inside,” said George.

Jane went in, and the three of them sat together; but Anne would not speak of this matter before Jane. She wondered at her brother’s show of friendship for his wife. Could it be that he was reconciling himself to his unhappy marriage, trying to make something out of it at last?

The King hummed a snatch of a song. Anne watched him. He sparkled with jewels; he looked enormous; he was getting corpulent, he was no longer the handsomest prince in Christendom; he was no longer the golden prince. He was a coarse man whose face was too red, whose eyes were bloodshot, and whose leg was a hideously unwholesome ulcer. His eyes were gleaming; he was the lover now, and she remembered the lover well. How often had she seen that look in his eyes! Always before, the look had been for her. Strange indeed to know his desires were fixed on someone else—strange and terrifying.

She said: “The song is charming. Your own?”

He smiled. She was reclining on the bed he had given her before her confinement. It was a beautiful bed, he thought. By God, she should think herself lucky to have such a fine bed! He doubted whether there was such another bed in the world. Its splendor suited her, he thought indulgently. Anne! There was no one like her, of course; not even little . . . Well, he had never thought she was, but she was sweet, and Anne was fractious and could be maddening—and a man needed a change, if but to prove his manhood. He felt tender towards Anne at moments like this, when she said: “The song is charming. Your own?” It was when those great black eyes of hers seemed to look right through him and see more of his mind than he cared for anyone to see, that he was angry with her. She was more clever than a woman ought to be! Learned foreigners delighted to talk to her of the new Lutheran theories, and did great homage to her because she could converse naturally and easily with them. He liked that not. Any glory that came to a queen should come through her king. Her beauty might be admired; the splendid clothes she wore, also; but her cleverness, her sharp retorts that might be construed as gibes . . . No, no; they angered him.

He would have her keep in mind that he had raised her up, that she owed all she now enjoyed to him. By God, there were moments when she would appear to forget this! She could please him still, could make him see that there never had been any like her, nor ever would be. That in itself irritated him; it bound him, and he did not like to be bound. He could think with increasing longing of the days before he had known Anne, before this accursed leg began to trouble him, when he was a golden-haired, golden-bearded giant of a man, excelling all others in any sport that could be named; riding hard, eating, drinking, loving, all in a grander manner than that of other men; with Wolsey—dear old Wolsey—to take over matters of state. She had killed Wolsey as surely as if she had slain him with her own hands, since but for her Wolsey would have been alive to this day.

More was in the Tower. And she had done this. And yet . . . there was none could satisfy him as she could; haughty, aloof, as she well knew how to be, always he must feel the longing to subdue her. Sometimes his feeling for her was difficult to explain; sudden anger and fury she aroused in him, and then as suddenly desire, blinding desire that demanded satisfaction at any price. Nay, there was no one like her, but she had cut him off from the days of his glowing manhood. He had met her and changed from that bright youth; during the years of his faithfulness he had been steadily undergoing a change; now he would never be the same man again.

But enough of introspection! He was trying hard to regain his youth. There was one—and she soon to be in his arms, looking up at him with sweet humility—who would assure him that he was the greatest of men as well as the mightiest of kings; who asked for nothing but the honor of being his mistress. Sweet balm to the scorching wounds the black-eyed witch on the bed had given him. But at the moment the witch was sweetly complimenting him, and he had ever found her irresistible in that mood. The other could wait awhile.

“My own, yes,” he said. “You shall hear me sing it, but not now.”

“I shall await the hearing with pleasure.”

He looked at her sharply. Did she mock? Did she like his songs? Did she compare them with her brother’s, with Wyatt’s, with Surrey’s? Did she think they suffered by comparison?

She was smiling very sweetly. Absently she twirled a lock of her hair. Her eyes were brilliant tonight, and there was a flush in her cheeks. He was taken aback at the contemplation of her beauty, even though he had come to know it too familiarly.

The little one would be awaiting him. Her homage was very sweet. He would sing his song to her, and have no doubts of her approval—but for that reason it was not as sweet as Anne’s. She thought him wonderful. She was not clever; a woman should not be clever; her mission in life was to please her lord. And yet . . . he was proud of his Queen. But what matter? It was but manly to love; there was little harm in a dash of light loving here and there; the ladies expected it, and a king should please his subjects.

“Henry . . .” she said. He paused, patting the diamond which was the centre button of his coat. “There is something I would say to you.”

“Can it not wait?”

“I think you would rather hear it now.”

“Then tell me quickly.”

She sat up on the bed and held out her hands to him, laughing.

“But it is news I would not care to hurry over.” She was watching his face eagerly

“What!” said the King. “Anne . . . what meanest thou?”

He took her hands, and she raised herself to a kneeling position.

“Tell me,” she said, putting her face close to his, “what news would you rather I gave, what news would please you more than any?”

His heart was beating wildly. Could it be what he had longed to hear? Could it really be true? And why not? It was the most natural . . . it was what all expected, what all were waiting for.

“Anne!” he said.

She nodded.

He put his arms about her; she slid hers about his neck.

“I thought to please you,” she said.

“Please me!” He was hilarious as a schoolboy. “There could be naught to give me greater pleasure.”

“Then I am happy.”

“Anne, Anne, when . . . ?”

“Not for eight long months. Still . . .”

“You are sure?”

She nodded, and he kissed her again.

“This pleases me more than all the jewels in the world,” he told her.

“It pleases me as much as it pleases you. There have been times of late . . . when I have felt . . .”

He stopped her words by kissing her.

“Bah! Then thou wert indeed a foolish girl, Anne!”

“Indeed I was. Tell me, were you about to go on an important mission? For I would fain talk of this . . .”

He laughed. “Important mission! By God! I would desert the most important of missions to hear this news!”

He had forgotten her already, thought Anne exultantly. Here was the tender lover returned. It had only needed this.

He did not leave her, not that night, nor the next. He had forgotten the demure little girl; he had merely been passing the time with her. Anne was with child. This time a son; certainly a son. Why not! All was well. He had done right to marry Anne. This was God’s answer!

Henry felt sure of his people’s joy, once his son was born. It would but need that to have done with the murmuring and grumbling. He forgot the girl with whom he had been pleasing himself; he was the loyal husband now; the father of a daughter, about to be the father of a son. He gave up the idea of going to France, and instead went on a tour through the midlands with Anne—belligerent and mighty. This is the Queen I have chosen. Be good subjects, and love her—or face my wrath!

Subjects en masse were disconcerting. A king might punish a few with severity, but what of that? The Dacres affair was proof that the people were not with Anne. Dacres was devoted wholeheartedly to the Catholic cause, and thus to Katharine; and for this reason, Northumberland—still a great admirer of Anne—had quarreled with the man and accused him of treason. To Cromwell and Cranmer it seemed a good moment to conduct Lord Dacres to the block, so they brought him to London, where he was tried by his peers. The Lords, with unexpected courage and with a defiance unheard of under Henry’s despotic rule, had acquitted Dacres. This would seem to Henry like treason on the part of the peers, but it was much more; it meant that these gentlemen knew they had public support behind them, and that was backed up by hatred of Anne—whether she was with child or not made no difference. It shook Henry; it shattered Anne and her supporters. It seemed that everyone was waiting now for the son she promised to produce; that of course would make all the difference; Henry could never displace the mother of his son. Once Anne gave birth to a boy, who showed some promise of becoming a man, she was safe; until then she was tottering.

Anne was very uneasy; more so than anyone, with perhaps the exception of George, could possibly guess. She would wander in the grounds around Greenwich, and brood on the future. She wished to be alone; sometimes when she was in the midst of a laughing crowd she would steal away. Anne was very frightened.

Each day she hoped and prayed for some sign that she might be pregnant; there was none. She had planned boldly, and it seemed as if her plan had failed. What will become of me? she wondered. She could not keep her secret much longer.

She had believed, when she told the King that she was with child, that soon she must be. Why was it that she was not? Something told her the fault lay with him, and this idea was supported by Katharine’s disastrous experiences and her own inability to produce another child. There was Elizabeth, but Elizabeth would not do. She murmured: “Oh, Elizabeth, my daughter, why wast thou not born a boy!”

She watched the clouds drifting across the summer sky; she looked at the green leaves on the trees and murmured: “Before they fall I shall have to tell him. A woman cannot go on for ever pretending she is pregnant!”

Perhaps by then . . . Yes, that had been the burden of her thoughts . . . Perhaps by then that which had been a fabrication of her tortured mind would be a reality. Perhaps by then there would be a real child in her womb, not an imaginary one.

The days passed. Already people were glancing at her oddly. Is the Queen well? How small she is! Can she really be with child? What think you? Is something wrong? Is this her punishment for the way she treated poor Queen Katharine?

She sat under the trees, praying for a child. How many women had sat under these trees, frightened because they were to bear a child! And now here was one who was terrified because she was not to bear one, because she, feeling herself in a desperate situation, had seen in such a lie a possible way out of her difficulties.

Her sister Mary came and sat beside her. Mary was plumper, more matronly, but still the same Mary although perhaps overripe now. Still unable to say no, I’ll warrant, thought Anne, and was suddenly filled with sharp envy.

“Anne,” said Mary, “I am in great trouble.”

Anne’s lips curled; she wondered what Mary’s trouble was, and how it would compare with her own.

“What trouble?” asked Anne, finding sudden relief as her thoughts necessarily shifted from herself to her sister.

“Anne, dost know Stafford?”

“What!” cried Anne. “Stafford the gentleman usher?”

“The very one,” said Mary. “Well . . . he and I . . .”

“A gentleman usher!” said Anne.

“All the world seemed to set so little by me, and he so much,” said Mary. “I thought I could take no better way out but to take him and forsake all other ways.”

“The King will never consent,” said Anne.

“Perhaps when he knows I am to have a child . . .”

Anne turned on her sister in horror. Mary had been a widow for five years. Naturally one would not expect her to live a nun’s life, but one did expect her to show a little care. Oh, thought Anne, how like Mary! How like her!

Mary hastened to explain. “He was young, and love overcame us. And I loved him as he did me. . . .”

Anne was silent.

“Ah!” went on Mary, “I might have had a man of higher birth, but I could never have had one who could have loved me so well . . . nor a more honest man.”

Anne looked cold, and Mary could not bear coldness now; she did not know of her sister’s trials; she pictured her happy and secure, rejoicing in her queenly state. It seemed unkind to have from her no word for reassurance.

Mary stood up. “I had rather be with him than I were the greatest queen!” she cried, and began to run across the grass into the palace.

Anne watched her. Mary—a widow—was with child, and afraid because of it. Anne—a queen and a wife—was not, and far, far more afraid than Mary could understand, because of it! Anne threw back her head and laughed immoderately; and when she had done, she touched her checks and there were tears upon them.

When Anne told Henry there was not to be a child, he was furious.

“How could such a mistake occur!” he demanded suspiciously, his little eyes cold and cruel.

“Simply!” she flared back. “And it did, so why argue about it!”

“I have been tricked!” he cried. “It seems that God has decreed I shall never have a son.”

And he turned away, for there was a certain speculation in his eyes which he did not wish her to see. He went to the demure little lady-in-waiting.

“Ha!” he said. “It seems a long time since I kissed you, sweetheart!”

She was meek, without reproaches. How different from Anne! he thought, and remembered resentfully how she had commanded him during the days of his courtship, and how when she had become his mistress she continued to berate him.

By God, he thought, I’ll have none of that. Who brought her up, eh? Who could send her back whence she came? Women should be meek and submissive, as this one was.

Anne watched angrily, trying to follow her brother’s advice and finding herself unable to do so.

“Madge,” she said to her cousin, a lovely girl of whom she was very fond, “go to that girl and tell her I would see her this minute.”

Madge went, and awaiting the arrival of the girl, Anne paced up and down, trying to compose herself, trying to rehearse what she would say to her.

The girl came, eyes downcast, very frightened, for Anne’s eyes were blazing in spite of her efforts to remain calm.

“I would have you know,” said Anne, “that I have been hearing evil reports of my ladies. I am sending you back to your home. Be ready to start as soon as you hear from me that you are to do so.”

The girl scarcely looked at Anne; she blushed scarlet, and her lips quivered.

Sly creature! thought Anne angrily. And she the king’s mistress! What he can see in the girl I do not understand, except that she is a trifle pretty and very meek. Doubtless she tells him he is wonderful! Her lips twisted scornfully, and then suddenly she felt a need to burst into tears. Here was she, the Queen, and must resort to such methods to rid herself of her rivals! Was everyone in this court against her? Her father was anxious now, she knew, wondering how long she would retain her hold on the King; Norfolk no longer troubled to be courteous; they had quarrelled; he had stamped out of the room on the last occasion she had seen him, muttering that of her which she would prefer not to remember; Suffolk watched, sly, secretly smiling; the Princess Mary was openly defiant. And now this girl!

“Get you gone from my presence!” said Anne. “You are banished from court.”

The girl’s reply was to go straight to the King, who imediately countermanded the Queen’s order.

He left the girl and went to Anne.

“What means this?” he demanded.

“I will not have you parade your infidelities right under my nose!”

“Madam!” roared the King. “I would have you know I am master here!”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “you cannot expect me to smile on your mistresses and to treat them as though they were the most faithful of my attendants.”

He said coarsely: “If that is what I wish, you shall do it . . . as others did before you!”

“You mistake me,” she answered.

“I mistake you not. From where do you derive your authority if not from me! Consider from what I lifted you. I have but to lift my finger to send you back whence you came!”

“Why not lift it then?” she blazed. “Your pretty little mistress doubtless would grace the throne better than I. She is so brilliant! Her conversation is so witty! The people would acclaim her. But, Henry, do you not think she might put you a little in the shade. . . . Such wit . . . such brilliance!”

He looked at her with smoldering eyes; there were occasions when he could forget he was a king and put his hands about that little neck, and press and press until there was no breath left in her. But a king does not do murder; others do it for him. It was a quick thought that passed through his mind and was gone before he had time to realize it had been there.

He turned and strode out of the room.

Jane Rochford had overheard that quarrel. She was excited; it gave her a pleasurable thrill to know that Anne was having difficulties with her husband, just as she herself had with George, though with a difference.

Jane crept away and came back later, begging a word with the Queen. Could the ladies be dismissed? Jane whispered. What she had to say was for Anne’s ears alone.

She expressed her sympathy.

“Such a sly wench! I declare she deliberately sets out to trap the King. All that modesty and reluctance . . .” Jane glanced sideways at Anne; had her barb struck a vulnerable spot? Oh, how did it feel, where you have shown reluctance to a king and complete indifference to the feelings of his wife, to find your position suddenly reversed; yourself the neglected wife and another careless of your feelings? Jane was so excited she could scarcely talk; she wanted to laugh at this, because it seemed so very amusing.

“But I have not come to commiserate with you, dear sister. I want to help. I have a plan. Were I to let her people know that she is in danger of disgracing herself—oh, I need not mention His Majesty—it might be a friendly warning. . . . I would try. I trow that, were she removed from court, the King would be the most loyal of husbands; and how can a woman get children when her husband has no time for her, but only for other women!”

Jane spoke vehemently, but Anne was too sick at heart to notice it. Everywhere she looked, disaster was threatening. She was young and healthy, but her husband was neither so young nor so healthy; she could not get a child, when the most urgent matter she had ever known was that she should first get with child, and that the child should be a son. The King’s health was doubtless to blame, but the King never blamed himself; when he was in fault he blamed someone else. There was evidence of that all about him, and had been for years. Francis had made an alarming move; he had begun to talk once more of a match between his son and Mary. What could that mean, but one thing! Mary was a bastard; how could a bastard marry the son of the King of France?

There was only one answer: The King of France no longer regarded Mary as a bastard. Her hopes had soared when Clement died and Paul III took his place; Paul had seemed more inclined to listen to reason, but what did she know of these matters? Only what it was deemed wise to tell her! Francis, whom she had regarded as a friend to herself, who had shown decided friendship when they had met at Calais, had decided it was unsafe to quarrel with Charles and with Rome. France was entirely Catholic—that was the answer. Francis could not stand out against his people; his sympathy might be with Anne, but a king’s sympathy must be governed by diplomacy; Francis was showing a less friendly face to Anne. She saw now that the whole of Europe would be against the marriage; that would have meant nothing, had Henry been with her, had Henry been the devoted lover he had remained during the waiting years. But Henry was turning from her; this sly, meek, pretty girl from the opposite camp was proof of that. She was filled with terror, for she remembered the negotiations which had gone on before news of a possible divorce had reached Katharine. Everyone at court had known before Katharine; they had whispered of The King’s Secret Matter. Was the King now indulging once more in a secret matter? Terrified, she listened to Jane; she was ready to clutch at any straw. That was foolish—she might have known Jane was no diplomatist. Jane’s art was in listening at doors, slyly setting one person against another.

Henry discovered what Jane was about.

“What!” he shouted. “This is the work of Rochford’s wife. She shall be committed to the Tower by the Traitor’s Gate.” She wept and stormed, cursing herself for her folly. To think she had come to this by merely trying to help Anne! What would become of her now? she wondered. If ever she got out of the Tower alive, she would be clever, subtle. . . . Once before she had been careless; this time she had been equally foolish, but she had learned her lesson at last. George would bear her no gratitude for what she had done; he would say: “What a clumsy fool you are, Jane!” Or if he did not say it, he would think it.

All this she had done for George really . . . and he cared not, had no feeling for her at all. “Methinks I begin to hate him!” she murmured, and looked through her narrow windows onto the cobbles beneath.

George came to see his sister; he was secretly alarmed.

“Jane has been sent to the Tower!” he said. Anne told him what had happened. “This grows mightily dangerous, Anne.”

“You to tell me that! I assure you I know it but too well.”

“Anne, you must go very carefully.”

“You tell me that persistently,” she answered pettishly. “What must I do now? I have gone carefully, and I have been brought to this pass. What is happening to us? Mary in disgrace, our father quite often absenting himself from court, shamefaced, hardly looking at me! And Uncle Norfolk becoming more and more outspoken! You, alarmed that I will not be cautious, and I . . .”

“We have to go carefully, that is all. We have to stop this affair of the King’s with this girl; it must not be allowed to go on.”

“I care not! And it were not she, it would be another.”

“Anne, for God’s sake listen to reason! It matters not if it were another one; it only matters that it should be she!”

“You mean . . . there is more in this than a simple love affair?”

“Indeed I do.”

Madge Shelton looked in at the door.

“I beg your pardon. I had thought Your Majesty to be alone.” She and George exchanged cousinly greetings, and Madge retired.

“Our cousin is a beautiful girl,” said George.

Anne looked at him sharply.

He said: “You’ll hate what I am about to say, Anne. It is a desperate remedy, but I feel it would be effective. Madge is delightful, so young and charming. The other affair may well be beginning to pall.”

“George! I do not understand. . . .”

“We cannot afford to be over-nice, Anne.”

“Oh, speak frankly. You mean—throw Madge to the King, that he may forget that other . . .”

“It is not a woman we have to fight, Anne. It is a party!”

“I would not do it,” she said. “Why, Madge . . . she is but a young girl, and he . . . You cannot know, George. The life he has lived. . . .”

“I do know. Hast ever thought we are fighting for thy life?”

She tried to throw off her fears with flippancy. She laughed rather too loudly; he noticed uneasily that of late she had been given to immoderate laughter.

“Ever since I had thought to be Queen, there have been those ready to thrust prophecies under my eyes. I mind well one where I was depicted with my head cut off!” She put her hands about her throat. “Fret not, George. My husband, after the manner of most, amuses himself. He was all eagerness for me before our marriage; now? She shrugged her shoulders and began to laugh again.

“Be silent,” said George. “What of Elizabeth?”

She stopped laughing.

“What of Elizabeth?”

“It has been decreed that Mary Tudor is a bastard, because the King tired of her mother and decided—as she could no longer hope to give him a son—that he was no longer married to her. Oh, we know of his conscience, we know of his treatise . . . we know too well the story. But, Anne, we are alone and we need not fear each other. . . . Ah! What a good thing it is to have in this world one person of whom you need not cherish the smallest fear! Anne, I begin to think we are not so unlucky, you and I.”

“Please stop,” she said. “You make me weep.”

“This is no time for tears. I said Mary has been decreed a bastard, though her mother is of Spain and related to the most powerful man in Europe. Anne, you are but the daughter of the Earl of Wiltshire—Sir Thomas Boleyn not long since—and he was only raised to his earldom to do honor to you; he could be stripped of that honor easily enough. He is no Emperor, Anne! Dost see what I mean? Mary was made a bastard; what of Elizabeth? Who need fear her most humble relations?”

“Yes,” said Anne breathlessly. “Yes!”

“If the King has no sons, Elizabeth will be Queen of England . . . or Mary will! Oh, Anne, you have to fight this, you have to hold your place for your daughter’s sake.”

“You are right,” she said. “I have my daughter.”

“Therefore . . .”

She nodded. “You are right, George. I think you are often right. I shall remember what you said about our being lucky. Yes, I think we are; for who else is there, but each other!”

The next day she sent Madge Shelton with a message to the King. From a window she watched the girl approach him, for he was in the palace grounds. Yes, he was appreciative; who could help being so, of Madge! Madge had beauty; Madge had wit. She had made the king laugh; he was suggesting they should take a turn round the rose garden.

Anne soothed her doubts with the reflection that Madge was a saucy wench, able to take care of herself, and had probably had love affairs before. Besides . . . there was Elizabeth!

The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was uneasy. Rumors came from the court, and one could not ignore them. All was not well with the Queen. She herself had quarreled with her stepson, the Duke, because he had spoken as she did not care to hear him speak, and it had been of the Queen. I never did like the man, she mused. Cruel, hard opportunist! One could tell which way the wind was blowing, by what he would have to say. Which way was the wind blowing? She liked not these rumors.

She was to be state governess to the Princess Elizabeth, a further sign of Anne’s friendship for her. “I do hope the dear child is well and happy. It is a terrible trial to be a queen, and to such a king!” she murmured to herself.

The Duchess was fractious in her own household. Those girls were noisy in their room at night, and she had heard it whispered that they were over-free with the young men.

She sent for Mary Lassells, whom she did not like overmuch. The girl was of humble birth, apt to look sullen; she was really a serving-maid, and should not be with the ladies. I must see to that one day, thought the duchess, and filed the matter away in that mental pigeon-hole which was crammed full of forgotten notes.

“Mary Lassells,” she said, when the girl came to her, “there is much noise in the ladies’ sleeping apartments at night. These ladies are under my care, and as since my granddaughter’s coronation I find myself with less and less leisure, I am going to take a few precautions to make sure of correct behavior on the part of these young people.”

The girl was smiling primly, as though to indicate that there was every reason for the Duchess to take precautions. This angered the Duchess; she did not wish to be reminded that she had been lax; she would have preferred the girl to look as though this were a quite unnecessary precaution being taken by an over-careful duenna.

“It will be your duty, Mary Lassells, every night when the ladies have retired, to see that the key of their apartment is placed in the lock outside the door. Then at a fixed hour I shall send someone to lock the door, and the key will be brought to me.”

The Duchess sat back in her chair, well pleased.

“I think that will be a very excellent plan, Your Grace,” said Mary Lassells unctuously.

“Your opinion was not asked, Mary Lassells,” said the Duchess haughtily. “That will do. Now remember please, and I will send someone for the key this very night.”

Mary said nothing. It was shocking to consider what went on in that room at night. Catherine Howard behaved quite shamelessly now with Francis Derham; he would bring fruit and wine for her, and they would sit on her bed and laugh and chatter, telling everyone that as they were really married there was no harm in what they were doing. Derham was very much in love with the child—that was obvious—and she with him; he salved his conscience by pretending they were married. It was very silly, thought Mary Lassells, and certainly time such wickedness was stopped.

They were planning for tonight. Let them plan! What a shock for them, when they were waiting to receive their lovers, to find the door locked, keeping them out! And so would it be every night. No more games, no more of such wicked folly.

Though Manox never came to the room now, she often thought of him. Some said he was sorely troubled because he had lost little Catherine Howard. And she not fourteen! Thirteen at the most. Was ever such crass wickedness allowed to go unpunished! She will go to hell and suffer eternal torment when she dies, I’ll swear! And Mary Lassells felt happier at the thought.

They were all laughing, chattering in their silly way, when Mary Lassells went to the door to obey the Duchess’s instructions. “Where go you?” asked one girl.

“Merely to act on Her Grace’s orders.” Mary put the key in the outer lock. Inside the room they heard her exchanging a few words with someone outside the door. Mary came back into the room, and the door was immediately locked on the outside.

There was a chorus of excitement. “What means this?” “Is it a joke?” “What said you, Mary Lassells?” “Why did you take the key?”

Mary Lassells faced them, her prim mouth working. “Her Grace the Duchess is much displeased. She has heard the laughing and chatter that goes on here of nights. She has taken me on one side and told me what she will do. Every night the door of this apartment is to be locked and the key taken to her.”

There were cries of rage.

“Mary Lassells! You have been bearing tales!”

“Indeed I have not!”

“What can one expect of a cook’s daughter!”

“I am not a cook’s daughter.”

“Oh, well . . . something such!”

“This is shameful. Her Grace merely asked me to put the key outside. . . . I suppose because she sees I am more virtuous than the rest of you.”

Dorothy Barwicke said: “Do you swear, Mary Lassells, that you have said nothing to Her Grace of what happens in this room?”

“I swear!”

“Then why . . . ?”

“She has heard the noise in here. She says too that she has heard whispers of what goes on. . . . Doubtless the servants. . . .”

“They may have heard the gentlemen creeping up the stairs!” said one girl with a giggle. “I declare Thomas made one devil of a row last time.”

“The truth remains,” said Mary Lassells, “that you are under suspicion. I only hope Her Grace does not think I have been a party to your follies!”

“Impossible!”

“You would find it difficult, Mary, to discover one who would be a partner.”

The girls were rocking on their beds, laughing immoderately.

“Poor Mary!” said Catherine. “I am sure Manox likes you very well.”

Everyone shrieked with laughter at that. Catherine was hurt; she had not meant to be unkind. She had seen Manox and Mary together before she had broken with him, and she had thought they seemed friendly. She would have liked Manox to find someone he could care for. Mary too. It seemed a satisfactory settlement, to Catherine.

Mary threw her a glance of hatred.

“Well,” said Dorothy Barwicke, “this is an end of our little frolics . . . unless . . .”

“Unless what?” cried several voices.

“There are some very rash and gallant gentlemen among our friends; who knows, one might find a way of stealing the keys!”

“Stealing the keys!” The adventures would have an additional spice if keys had first to be stolen.

The young ladies settled into their beds and talked for a long time. Mary Lassells lay in hers, trembling with rage against them all, and particularly against Catherine Howard.

In his prison in the Tower of London, Margaret Roper stood before her father. He was hollow-eyed, but he was smiling bravely, and she saw that he was more serene in his mind than he had been for a long time. Margaret flung herself at him, reproaches on her lips for those who had brought him to this, for her hatred of them she could not express in his presence, knowing it would disturb him.

They could only look at each other, drinking in each detail of the well-loved faces, knowing that only with the greatest good luck could they hope for another interview. He was braver than she was. Perhaps, she thought, it is easier to die than to be left. He could laugh; she could not. When she would have spoken, tears ran from her eyes.

He understood her feelings. Had he not always understood her?

“Let me look at thee, Meg! Thou hast been too long in the sun. There are freckles across thy nose. Look after the children, Meg. Let them be happy. Meg, thou and I may speak frankly together.”

She nodded. She knew that all pretense between them was at an end. He would not say to her, as he might have said to any of the others: “This will pass!” They were too close; they could hide nothing. He knew that it was but a matter of time before he must lay his head on the block.

“Take care of the children, Meg. Frighten them not with gloomy tales of death. Tell them of bright chariots and of beauty. Make them see death as a lovely thing. Do this for me, Meg. Grieve not that I must leave this gloomy prison. My spirit is enclosed in a shell. It longs for the hatching. It longs to be born. Oh, let that shell be cracked. What matter by whom, by the King or his mistress!”

“Speak not of her, Father . . . But for her . . .”

He must lay his hands on her lips, and say a word for the creature.

“Judge her not, Meg. For how do we know what she may be suffering at this moment?”

She burst out: “At the court there is sport and dances. What do they care that you—the noblest of men—shall die! They must amuse themselves; they must destroy those who would stand in the way of their pleasure. Father, do not ask me not to curse them—for I do, I do!”

“Poor Anne Boleyn!” he said sadly. “Alas, Meg, it pitieth me to consider what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come to. These dances of hers will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footballs, but ’twill not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.”

He was saint indeed, thought Margaret, for he could defend her who was to cause his death; he could be sorry for her, could weep a little for her. He talked of the King more frankly than she had ever heard him spoken of. He said there was always cruelty in a man who cannot restrain his passions.

“Be not troubled, sweet daughter, even when you see my head on London Bridge. Remember it is I who will look down on thee and feel pity.”

He asked of family affairs, of the garden, of the house, of the peacocks. He could laugh; he could even jest. And sick at heart, yet comforted, she left him.

After his trial she saw him brought back to the Tower. He walked with his head erect; though she noticed his clothes were creased and looked shabby; well she remembered the gold chain ornamented with double roses, the dark green coat with its fur collar and big sleeves which he favored as his hands were of awkward shape; she looked at his hands, loving him afresh for his one vanity. Anger surged through her that they should have made him walk between the guards, their bills and halberts ready lest he should attempt an escape. Fools, to think he would try to escape! Did they not know he welcomed this, that he had said to Will: “I am joyful because the first step which is the worst and most difficult, is taken!” Had he not said that to stand out against the King was to lose one’s body, but to submit to him was to lose one’s soul!

She ran to him, breaking through the guards; she flung her arms about his neck. And the guards turned away that they might not see this which brought tears to their eyes.

“Meg!” he whispered. “For Christ’s sake don’t unman me!”

She remembered nothing more until she was lying on the ground while those about her chafed her hands and whispered words of comfort; she was conscious of nothing but the hateful sultry July heat, and the fact that she would never see him alive again.

From the Tower he wrote to her, using a piece of coal, to tell her which day he would be executed. He could not forbear to jest even then. “It will be St. Thomas’s Eve, a day very meet and convenient for me. And I never liked your manners better than when you kissed me last. For I like when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy.”

She was to go to his burial. The King had given written consent—and this was a privilege—providing that at his execution Sir Thomas would promise not to use many words.

So he died; and his head was impaled on London Bridge to show the people he was a traitor. But the people looked at it with anger; they murmured sullenly; for these people knew they looked at the head of one who was more saint than traitor.

Henry was uneasy; he was tired of women. Women should be a pleasant diversion; matters of state should be those affairs to claim the attention of a king.

The French King was trying to renew negotiations for a marriage with Mary. More was in prison awaiting execution; so was Fisher. He had postponed execution of these men, knowing of the popular feeling towards them. He had ever been afraid of popular feeling.

Anne colored all his thoughts; he was angry with her who had placed him in this position; angry with his desire for her, brief though it might be, without which his life would be incomplete. Anne had brought him to this pass; he could wish she had never entered his life, yet he could not imagine it without her. He hated her; he loved her. She was a disturbance, an irritation; he could never escape from her; he fancied he never would; worse still, he was not entirely sure that he wanted to. Obviously a most unfortunate state of affairs for a mighty king to find himself in. He had broken with Rome for Anne’s sake; the Pope’s name had been struck from the prayer books, and it was not mentioned at Divine Service; yet in the streets the people never ceased to talk of the Pope, and with reverence. Wolsey was gone, and with his going, the policy of England was changed. Wolsey it was who had believed that England must preserve the balance of power in Europe; Henry had pursued a new policy, he had cut off England from Europe. England stood alone.

Those matters, which had once been the concern of the Cardinal’s, were now the King’s. Cromwell was sly and cunning, but a servant, no leader; Cromwell did what he was told. Why should a man with so much on his shoulders be pestered by women! Madge Shelton was a bright wench, but he had had enough of her. Anne was Anne . . . none like her, but a witch—a nagging witch at that. Too clever, trying to dictate to England through him; advising rashness here, there, everywhere. This state of affairs was such as to make a man’s blood—which was ever ready to simmer—bubble and boil over.

He was going to be firm. Anne could not get children; he would be better without Anne; she disturbed him, distracted him from state matters. Women were for bedtime, not to sidle between a king and his country.

The people were dissatisfied. There were too many noble lords ready to support the Catholic cause, possibly conspiring with Chapuys. These were not dangerous at the moment, but there were inevitable perils in such a situation. He had his daughter Mary watched; he believed there was a plot afoot to smuggle her out of the country to the Emperor. What if that warrior thought to raise an army against the King, with the replacement of Katharine and Mary as its cause! How many nobles of England, who now did honor to its King, would slip over to the Emperor’s banner? Henry asked himself uneasily. His conscience told him that he had embarked on this matter of divorce that he might produce a son and save England from civil war, but he had produced no son, and his actions had put England nearer to civil war than she had been since the conflicts between the houses of York and Lancaster.

He sounded a few of his most trusted counsellors on a new line of action. What if he divorced Anne? It looked as if she could not have a son. Might not this be a sign from Almighty God that the union with Anne had not found favor in the sight of heaven? It was astonishing; a healthy girl to be so barren. One daughter! One pretended pregnancy! His lips curled. How she had fooled him! How she continued to fool him! How, when he was thinking he would be better without her, she would lure him and tempt him, so that instead of occupying his mind with plans to rid himself of her, he found himself making love to her.

His counsellors shook their heads at the suggestion of a second divorce. There were points beyond which even the most docile men could not go, and the most despotic of kings could not carry them with him. Perhaps these men were thinking of Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, awaiting death stoically in the Tower; perhaps they were thinking that the people were murmuring against the doings of the King.

Divorce Anne he might, his counsellors thought, but only on condition that he took Katharine back.

Katharine! That made the King roar like a wounded animal. Katharine back! Anne angered him, Anne plagued him, but at least she excited him. Let matters rest. Not for anything would be have Katharine back.

These matters all tended to arouse the wrath of the King. The new Pope aggravated him still further, by raising John Fisher—a man who was in prison for treason—to cardinal’s rank. When Henry heard the news, he foamed with rage.

“I’ll send the head to Rome for the cap!” he cried fiercely. He had had enough. Fisher was executed. Sir Thomas More was to follow. Nor were these the only traitors; those monks of the Charterhouse who had refused to acknowledge him Supreme Head of the Church were to be punished with the utmost severity. This should be a sign to the people that all those who would not do the will of Henry the Eighth of England should suffer thus. He would have the people heartily aware of this. There should be public executions; there should be hangings; there should be burnt flesh offerings to the supremacy of the King. Murder was in the King’s heart; he murdered now with a greater ferocity than when he had murdered men like Empson, Dudley, and Buckingham; the murders of these men were calculated, cold-blooded; now he murdered in revenge and anger. The instruments of torture in those gloomy dungeons of pain beneath the gray buildings of the Tower should be worked night and day. The King was intent on the complete subjugation of all who raised a voice against him.

A pall of smoke hung over London. The people huddled together, watching the mutilation, listening to the shrieks and groans of martyrs.

The Continent was aghast at the news of the death of Fisher and More; the Church infuriated by the murder of Fisher, the political world shocked beyond expression by that of More. The Vatican found its voice, and sent forth vituperation against the monster of England. The Emperor, astonished at the stupidity of a king who could rid himself of the ablest man in the country, said: “Had we been master of such a servant, we would rather have lost the fairest city in our dominion than such a counsellor.”

Europe mourned wise men, but London mourned its martyrs, and the King was shaken, afraid. But his blood was up; he was shrewd enough to know that any sign of weakness would not help him now; he had gone too far to retrace his steps. When More had said that a man who cannot restrain his passions is essentially cruel, he spoke the truth. The real Henry emerged from behind the fair, flushed, good-tempered hail-fellow-well-met personality which his people—as good Englishmen—had admired so long. The cold, cruel, implacable, relentless egoist was exposed.

But there was still the conscience, which could make him tremble. “What I have done,” he told it, “has been done for Anne.” He did not say “I am a great hater!” but “I am a great lover.”

They brought the news of Thomas More’s execution to him while he played at the tables with Anne; as he sat opposite her, he pictured beside her brilliant beauty the calm ascetic face of the man whose death he had just brought about.

He stood up. He had no stomach for the game now. He knew that he had murdered a great man, a good man; and he was afraid.

Then he saw Anne sitting there opposite him. The answer to his conscience was clear; he knew how to stifle that persistent voice inside him.

He said: “Thou art the cause of this man’s death!”

Then he left the table and shut himself in his private chamber in sudden fright which nothing would allay.

Crossing London Bridge, people could not look up without seeing the ghastly sights exhibited there. The heads of brave men dripped blood; to this pass had their bravery brought them, since it was unwise to be brave in the reign of bluff King Hal.

On the lips of all were the names of More and Fisher. These men were saints enshrined in the hearts of the people; there could be no open worship of such saints. Many of the monks of the Charterhouse preferred death to admitting that Henry was Supreme Head of the Church. A large number of them went to the Tower; some were tortured on the rack, that they might betray their friends; many found their way into the embrace of the Scavenger’s Daughter, that vile instrument recently invented by Thomas Skevington, which contracted the body in a manner exactly opposite to that of the rack, so that blood was forced from the nose and ears; some were hung from the ceilings of dungeons by their wrists, which were encased in gauntlets, until their hands were bleeding and paralyzed; some had their teeth forced out by the brakes; some were tortured with the thumbscrews or the bilboes. People whispered together of the dreadful things that befell these saintly men in the Tower of London. Some were chained in airless dungeons, and left to starve; some were paralyzed by continued confinement in one of those chambers called the Little Ease, the walls of which were so contrived that its inmate could neither walk, nor sit, nor lie full length; some were put into the Pit, a noisome deep cavern in which rats were as ferocious as wild beasts and lived on those human wrecks who, chained and helpless, standing knee deep in filthy water, must face them while being unable to defend themselves. Some of the more obstinate monks were given an execution which was public and shameful; taken to Tyburn, they were half-hanged, cut down, and while they were conscious their abdomens were ripped open and their bowels dragged forth from their mutilated bodies and burned. Even after death their bodies were further desecrated.

This, the King would have the people know, might be the fate of any who questioned his supremacy. The people of London heard the screams of the Anabaptists as the flames leaped from the faggots at their feet, scorching and frizzling their bodies. In Europe the people talked of the terror which had befallen England; they talked in hushed, shocked whispers. When Henry heard this he laughed savagely, calling to mind the Spaniards’ way of dealing with heretics and how, but a few months before, Francis and his family had marched through Paris chanting piously while Lutherans were burned before the doors of Notre Dame.

Henry knew how to suppress rebellion; he knew how to make the people knuckle under. “I will have this thing an it cost me my crown!” he had been known to say, and he meant it. He was strong and ruthless; all men trembled before him. He was no longer the young and lusty boy seeking pleasure while a cardinal ruled; he was master. He would force all to recognize that, however much blood should flow.

He had a plan now which intrigued him; it was to make Thomas Cromwell his Vicar-general, and as such let him visit all the churches and monasteries of England. The Supreme Head of the church would know the state of these monasteries; it worried his conscience that stories he had heard from time to time of the profligacy of the monks and nuns might have some truth in them! What if these monasteries were the bawdy houses he had often heard it whispered that they were! What if there were men living licentious lives, sheltered by their monks’ robes! Those nuns, wrapped up in the garments of piety—what of them? He remembered the case of Eleanor Carey, that relative of Anne’s who had had two illegitimate children by a priest. These things had come to light, and if there was one thing the Supreme Head of the Church of England would not tolerate in his land, it was immorality! He would suppress it, he would stamp it out! Once it had been no concern of his, but now by God’s will he was the head of the Church, and by God, he would put an end to all evil practices.

Thomas Cromwell should go to these places; he should bring back evidence of what he found—and Thomas Cromwell could always be relied upon to bring back the evidence that was expected of him—and if that evidence warranted the dissolution of these places, then dissolved they should be! A list of their valuables should Thomas bring back; it was said they had some fine treasures in their chests—jewels, works of art only suited to a king’s palace. This was a good plan; later he would talk with Cromwell.

From his palace he saw the smoke over London. This was done in the name of righteousness. The Anabaptists denied the divinity of Christ; they deserved to die.

In the courtyards of the palace men talked together in whispers. Something was afoot. The King was nervous today; there had been a time in the days of his youth when he had gone among his people unafraid, but now it was not so. If he stayed in a house, even for a night, he took a locksmith with him that new bolts might be put on the door of his sleeping apartment; he had the straw of his bed searched every night for hidden daggers.

“Now what?” he said, and leaning from his windows roared down to be told what fresh news was exciting them.

A little group of courtiers looked up at him in some alarm.

“There is some news. Hide it not!” he shouted.

“’Tis naught, Your Majesty, but that the head of Sir Thomas More is no longer on the bridge.”

“What!” cried the King, roaring, that none might guess his voice shook. “Who moved it then?”

There was no answer.

“Who moved it then?” he roared again.

“’Tis not known, Your Majesty . . . ’Tis but known that it is gone.”

He shut the window. His knees trembled; the whole of his great body shook. The head of More the martyr had been removed from the bridge, where it should have remained with the heads of other traitors. What means this? What meant it? A miracle, was it? There had been One who had risen from the dead; what if this man, More, were such another!

He could see the shrewd, kind face, did he but close his eyes; he could recall the humor, the mocking kindliness. He remembered the man so well; often had he walked in the Chelsea garden, his arm about the fellow’s neck. He remembered when he had written his book denouncing Luther, who had worked with him, whose lucid style, whose perfect Latin knowledge had largely made the book. And because he had had need to show this man he could not disobey his master, he had murdered him. True he had not wielded the axe; true he had not been the one to place the head among the heads of traitors; but he was the murderer nevertheless. His old friend More—the brightest light in his realm! He remembered how the man had walked with him and Katharine on the terraces of the palace, and talked of the stars, pointing them out to the royal pair, for he and Katharine had been interested in astronomy then. Now he was dead, he who had never wanted to sun himself in the brilliance of court life; who would have preferred to live quietly in the heart of his family with his books. He was dead; and his head had disappeared. This might be a miracle, a sign!

Anne came in, saw that he was distressed, and was unusually soft and ready to comfort him.

“You have had some shock.”

He looked at her eagerly; she thought he had the air of a frightened boy who is afraid to be left in the dark.

“More’s head has gone from London Bridge!”

She was taken aback; she looked at him, wide-eyed; and they were drawn together in their fear.

“Anne,” he said groping for her hand, “what means this, thinkest thou?”

She took his hand and pressed it firmly; she forgot the miracle of the missing head, since the fear which had been with her night and day was evaporating. Henry needed her; at moments such as this, it was to her he turned; she had been too easily humiliated, too ready to show her humiliation. She had nothing to fear. She was the wife of a man who, having absolute power, would have his way, but a clever woman might manage him still. She could see her folly stretching right back to her coronation; she thought she saw why she had appeared to lose her power over him. Now here he was, trembling and afraid, superstitious in an age of superstition, lacking that courage which had made her the reckless creature she was.

She smiled at him.

“My lord, someone has removed the head.”

“But who would dare?”

“He was a man who had many friends, and one of these might be ready to take his head from where it belonged.”

“I see that, Anne.” He was feeling better already; he looked at her through softly sentimental eyes. She was very beautiful, and now she was gentle and very reassuring; she was clever too; the others paled quickly. When Anne reassured, there was a good deal that was truth in the reassurance; the others flattered; it was good to be with Anne. “That was where the head belonged,” he said fiercely. “He was a traitor, Anne.”

“As all who seek to disobey Your Majesty’s commands,” she said.

“Thou speakest truth. ’Twas a friend of his that took the head. By God, that in itself was a traitorous act, was it not!”

She stroked his hand.

“Indeed it was. There will be those simple people who ever look on traitors as saints. Mayhap it would be well to leave this matter. Why should it worry us? We know the man deserved to die.”

“By God, you’re right!” he cried. “’Tis a matter of small importance.”

He did not wish to leave her; she distracted his thoughts from the memory of that severed head with its kindly mocking eyes.

It was reconciliation. In the court it was said: “She has a power over him, which none other could exercise.”

Her enemies cursed her. If she but give him a son, they said, she is Queen of England till her death.

Chapuys wrote home to the Emperor, Charles, telling him that the King of England was over and over again unfaithful, but that the concubine was cunning and knew how to manage the King. It would be unwise to attach too much importance to his brief infatuations for court ladies.

Anne was preparing the most splendid banquet the court had yet seen. She was feverish with delight. She felt as though she had come through a nightmare of terror, and now here was the morning to prove that the shadows had been conjured up out of her imagination, that they had no existence in truth. How could she have been so foolish; how could she have believed that she who had held the King so well in check, could have lost control now! She was supreme; his need of her was passionate and lasting; now that—as her husband—he was conscious of the shackles that held him to her, all she need do was lengthen the tether. Her fault had been in trying to keep it as tight as a mistress might. All a wife needed was a little more subtlety, and it had taken her two years of doubts and nightmares to realize this. Let him wander away from her, let him dally with others—it would but be to compare them with his incomparable Queen.

She was gayer than she had ever been. She designed new costumes; she called to her the most brilliant courtiers to arrange an entertainment that should enchant the King; Witty Wyatt, subtle George, gentle Harry Norris, amusing Francis Bryan, Henry Howard, those gay courtiers Francis Weston and William Brereton; others too, all the brightest stars of the court clustered about her, and she the dazzling center as it used to be. The King was with her constantly; she planned and thrilled to her plans.

One day she found one of the youngest of the musicians sitting alone playing, and she paused to listen, delighting in his delicate touch, thinking, He is more than ordinarily good. She had Madge Shelton bring him to her. He was young and slender, a rather beautiful boy with long tapering fingers and dreamy, dark eyes.

“Her Majesty heard your music,” said Madge. “She thought it good.”

The boy was overcome with the honor of being noticed by the Queen, who smiled on him most graciously.

“I would have you play awhile,” she said. “I feel you could be of use to us in the revels, for it would seem to me that we have not so many musicians of your talent in the court that we can afford to leave out one who plays as you do.”

She was charming, because she at once saw that his admiration was not merely that which he would give to his Queen. Her long sleeves hung over the hand with its slight malformation; the other, with long, white, jewel-decked fingers, rested lightly on her chair. He could not take his wondering eyes from her, for he had never been so close to her before.

“What is his name?” she asked, when he had been dismissed.

“It is Smeaton, Your Majesty. Mark Smeaton.”

“He was poorly clad,” she said.

“He is one of the humbler musicians, Your Majesty.”

“See that he has money with which to procure himself clothes. He plays too well to be so shabbily attired. Tell him he may play before me; I will have a part for him to take at the entertainment.”

She dismissed him from her mind, and gave herself over to fresh plans. There was an air of lightheartedness among her friends; George seemed younger, excessively gay. The Queen herself was as sparkling as she had ever been when she was the King’s mistress. She was the center of the brilliant pageant, the pivot round which the wit and laughter revolved; she was the most lovely performer. The King watched the entertainment, his eyes for her alone. Anne! he thought, inwardly chuckling. By God, she was meant to be a Queen. She could amuse him, she could enchant him, she could divert him, she could cast unpleasant thoughts from his mind.

He had forgotten Fisher; More too almost, for the removal of his head from London Bridge had been no miracle but the bold action of his daughter, Margaret Roper, who had gone stealthily and by night. Anne had learned this, and brought him the news.

“By God!” he had cried. “’Tis a treasonable offense to go against the King’s command!” She had soothed him. “Let be! Let be! ’Twas a brave action. Doubtless the girl loved her father well. People are full of sentiment; they would not care that a girl should be punished because she loved her father well. Let us have done with this gruesome affair of a traitor’s head. To please me, I would ask Your Majesty not to pursue the matter.”

He had frowned and feigned to be considering it, knowing full well that his people would not care for interference with Margaret Roper; then she had wheedled, and kissed him, and he had patted her thighs and said: “Well then, sweetheart, since you ask it, it shall be done. But I like not treason . . . I like it not at all!” She had smiled, well pleased, and so had he. An unpleasant business was done with.

He watched her now—the loveliest woman in the court—and too many of these young profligates had their eyes upon her, ready to be over-bold an they dared. He liked to know that they fancied her, even while it filled him with this smoldering rage. He could laugh. None dared to give her more than covert looks, for it would be treason to cast over-desirous eyes on what belonged to the King; and well they knew this King’s method of dealing with traitors! He called to her, would have her sit by him, would let his hands caress her.

It was borne home to the Queen’s enemies that their hopes had been premature, and to her friends that they had feared too soon.

Catherine Howard was joyous as a lark; like the lively young grasshopper, she danced all through the summer months without a thought of winter. She was discovering that she was more than ordinarily pretty; she was the prettiest of all the ladies; she had, said some, a faint resemblance to her cousin the Queen. She developed a love of finery, and being kept short of decorative clothes or the money with which to provide herself with even the smallest addition to her wardrobe, she looked to her lover to provide these. Derham was only too delighted. He was enchanted by the lovely child, who was so very youthful at times, at others completely mature. He would provide her with many little luxuries besides—wines and sweetmeats, fruit and flowers. So when Catherine yearned to possess an ornament called the French Fennel, which was being worn by all the court ladies who would follow the latest fashion, Derham told her that he knew a little woman in London with a crooked back who was most skilled in the making of flowers of silk. Catherine begged him to get this done for her. “I will pay you when I have the means,” she told him, which set him smiling and begging her that it should be a present. And so it was, but when she had the precious ornament, she was afraid to wear it until she had let it be known that one of the ladies had given it to her, for the Duchess was more watchful than she had been at Horsham.

It was tiresome of the old lady to have taken the precaution of locking the chamber door each night. Derham was an adventurous young man; he was passionately in love. He was not going to let a key separate him from Catherine. A little planning, a little scheming, a little nodding and looking the other way by those who liked to see good sport, and it was not such a difficult matter to steal the key after it had been brought to the Duchess.

There was the additional spice of planning what should be done, should there be a sudden intrusion.

“You would have to hurry into the gallery and hide there!” said Catherine.

“That I could do with the greatest of ease!” said Derham.

He would come to the chamber at any hour of the night; it was a highly exciting adventure they were both enjoying.

The others watched, rather wistfully. Derham was such a handsome young man and so much in love with the child; there were some, such as Dorothy Barwicke and a newcomer, Jane Acworth, who whispered to each other that Catherine Howard was the sort who would always find men to love her. What use to warn her? She was too addicted to physical love to heed any warning. If she realized that the path she was treading might be dangerous, she might try to reform, but she would surely slip back. She was a lusty little animal, irresistible to men because she found them irresistible. Mary Lassells thought the Duchess should be told, in secret so that she could come up and catch them in the act, but the others were against this. They wanted no probings, nor inquiries. They pointed out that they would all be implicated—even Mary Lassells, since she had been months in the house and had not seen fit to warn Her Grace before.

The Duchess was less comfortable in her mind than she had been. Apart from the rumors she heard at court, she sensed the presence of intrigue in her own household. She watched Catherine, flaunting her new French Fennel. Heaven knew there were plenty of men all too eager to take advantage of a young girl. She saw something in Catherine’s face, something secret and knowledgeable, and the memory of it would recur in her uneasy thoughts. Her other granddaughter, she believed, was not happy; the Duchess preferred not to think of what might be happening at court; better to turn her attention to her own house. Were the young men too free with the girls? She would have to be arranging a marriage for young Catherine soon; when she next saw the Queen, she would have a word with her about this. In the meantime the greatest care must be exercised.

Sometimes the Duchess did not sleep very well; sometimes she would wake in the night and fancy she heard footsteps on the stairs, or a muffled burst of laughter overhead. She knew now that for some time she had been suspicious of what went on in the girls’ apartments; there were some over-bold wenches there, she believed. I must bestir myself; I must look into this. There is my little granddaughter, Catherine to be considered. That French Fennel . . . She had said she got it from Lady Brereton. Now did she? Would her ladyship give such a handsome gift? What if one of the young gentlemen was seeking Catherine’s favors by offering gifts! It was not a very pleasant reflection.

Forced by a sense of impending danger both at court and at Lambeth, she roused herself one night soon after twelve, and went to the place where the key of the ladies’ apartment should be. It was not there. Puffing and panting with the fear of what she would find if she went to the room, she nevertheless could make no excuse for not going. It had ever been her habit to avoid the unpleasant, but here was something for the avoidance of which it would be most difficult to find an adequate excuse.

She put on a robe and went out of her sleeping apartment to the corridor. Slowly she mounted the staircase. She was distressed, for she was sure she could hear muffled voices coming from that room; she paused outside the door. There was no sound inside the room now. She opened the door and stood on the threshold. All the ladies were in their beds, but there was in that room an atmosphere of such tenseness that she could not but be aware of it, and she was sure that, though they had their eyes shut, they but feigned sleep.

She went first to Catherine’s bed. She drew off the clothes and looked at the naked body of her granddaughter. Catherine feigned sleep too long for innocence.

The Duchess thought she heard the faintest creak of boards in the gallery which ran along one side of the room. She had an alarmed feeling that if she had that gallery searched, the search would not be fruitless. It would set tongues wagging though, and she dared not let that happen.

Her panic made her angry; she wished to blame someone for the negligence of which she knew herself to be guilty. Catherine was lying on her back; the Duchess rolled her over roughly and brought her hand across the girl’s buttocks. Catherine yelled; the girls sat up in bed, the curtains were drawn back.

“What has happened? What is this?”

Did their exclamations ring true? wondered the old lady.

Catherine was holding her bruised flesh, for the Duchess’s rings had cut into her.

“I would know,” said the Duchess sharply, “who it was who stole my keys and opened this door.”

“Stole Your Grace’s keys. . . .”

“Opened the door . . .”

Oh, yes! The sly wenches . . . they knew well enough who it was. Thank God, she thought, I came in time!

Mary Lassells was trying to catch her eye, but she would not look at the sly creature. Didn’t the fool realize that what she just did not want to hear was the truth . . . providing of course that the truth was disturbing!

“Tomorrow,” said the Duchess, “I shall look into this matter. If any of you had aught to do with this matter of my keys, you shall be soundly whipped and sent home in disgrace. I shall make no secret of your sins, I warn you! I thought I heard noises here. Let me warn you that if I hear more noises it will be the worse for you.”

She went out and left them.

“There!” she said, as she settled down to sleep. “I have done my duty. I have warned them. After such a threat, none of them would dare to misbehave herself, and if any of them have already done so, they will take good care to keep quiet about it.”

In the morning she found her keys; they were not in their rightful place, which led her to hope and believe that they must have been there all the time, and that there had been an oversight, the doors having been left unlocked all that night.

Still, she was resolved to keep an eye on the young women, and particularly on Catherine.

There came a day when, entering what was known as the maids’ room, she saw Catherine and Derham together. The maids’ room was a long, pleasant, extremely light room in which the ladies sat to embroider, or to work tapestry, or to spin. Such a room was certainly forbidden to gentlemen.

The Duchess had come to the room, taking her usual labored steps, and had Derham and Catherine not been noisily engaged in a romp, they would assuredly have heard her approach.

Derham had come in to talk to Catherine, and she feigning greater interest in her piece of needlework than in him, had goaded him to snatch it from her; after which, Catherine immediately sought to retrieve it. They were not interested in the piece of needlework, except as an excuse for titillating their senses by apparent haphazard physical contacts. Derham ran round the room, flourishing the piece of needlework, and Catherine gave chase. Cornering him behind the spinning wheel, she snatched it from him, but he caught her round the waist and she slid to the floor, at which he did likewise. They rolled on the floor together, he with his arms about her, Catherine shrieking her delighted protests. And thus the Duchess found them.

She stood in the doorway, shouting at them for some seconds before they heard her angry voice.

Then she stalked over to them. They saw her and were immediately quiet, standing abashed before her.

She was trembling with rage and fury. Her granddaughter to be guilty of such impropriety! The girl’s gown was torn at the neck, noted Her Grace, and that doubtless on purpose! She narrowed her eyes.

“Leave us at once, Derham!” she said ominously. “You shall hear further of this.”

He threw Catherine a glance and went out.

The Duchess seized her frightened granddaughter by her sleeve and ripped her clothes off her shoulders.

“You slut!” she cried. “What means this behavior . . . after all my care!”

She lifted her ebony stick, and would have brought it down on Catherine’s head had she not dodged out of the way. The Duchess was growing a little calmer now, realizing it would not do to make too violent a scene.

She cornered Catherine, pushed her onto the couch and, bending over her, said: “How far has this gone?”

“It was nothing,” said Catherine, fearful for Derham as well as for herself. “It was just that he . . . stole my piece of needlework, and I . . . sought to retrieve it . . . and then . . . you came in.”

“His hands were on your neck!”

“It was to retrieve the needlework which I had snatched from him.”

The Duchess preferred to believe it was but a childish romp. She wanted no scandal. What if it came to the hardfaced Duke’s ears, of what went on in her house, what tricks and pranks those under her care got up to! He would not hesitate to whisper it abroad, the wicked man, and then would she be considered the rightful state governess for the Princess Elizabeth!

It must go no further than this room; but at the same time she must make Catherine understand that she must have no dangerous friendships with young men under her roof.

She said: “An I thought there was aught wrong in this romping between thee and Derham, I would have thee sent to the Tower; him too! As it is, I will content myself with giving you the biggest beating you have ever had in your life, Catherine Howard!”

She paused, horror-stricken; sitting in a comer, quietly trembling with fear, was one of her attendants, and she must have witnessed the whole scene.

The Duchess turned from Catherine and went over to her.

“Jane Acworth! You think to sit there and allow such behavior! What do you think your task is? To watch young men make free with Catherine Howard?” The girl, trembling, said: “Your Grace, it was naught . . .”

But a stinging blow at the side of her head silenced the girl. The Duchess continued to slap her for some seconds.

“Let me hear no more of this, girl, or you shall feel a whip across your shoulders. Catherine, go to my private chamber; you shall receive your punishment there!”

She went puffing from the room, very ill at ease. But having beaten Catherine, while Catherine writhed and shrieked, she felt she had done her duty.

She summoned one Margaret Morton, when she had done with Catherine.

“I would have speech with Francis Derham. Send him to me without delay!”

He came. She did not know how to punish him. She should banish him of course. But she had always liked him; he was quite the most charming young man of her household. If anything, he was over-bold, but there is something very attractive about over-boldness. He was a distant kinsman too . . . so perhaps it would be enough to warn him.

“I would have you know that you are without prospects. You could not marry my granddaughter. I would have you remember your position in this house, Francis Derham!”

“Your Grace, I must humbly apologize. It was but animal spirits. . . .”

The animal spirits of youth, she thought. There was something delightful about them. Memories came back, softening her. Suppose she allowed him to stay this time! She had warned him; he would not dare to presume again. He was such a handsome, courtly, charming boy!