Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

24

Anne Askew was burned at the stake for heresy on the sixteenth day of July in 1546. A week passed, then two. No one came to arrest any member of the queen’s household. Then we moved to Hampton Court for the month of August.

I was on my way to the stair turret that led to the queen’s apartments when I noticed a gentleman in the king’s livery loitering in the shadows. His hood kept me from recognizing him, even when he looked directly at me, but I could not help but notice when he dropped an official-looking document, rolled and tied with ribbon. Instead of retrieving it, he left it lying on the cobbles and hurried away.

I did not call out to him. It had been no accident that he’d let that roll of parchment fall directly in my path. The move had been made with deliberate precision, and only after he was sure that I’d seen him. I stopped beside the tightly rolled document, regarding it as if it were a snake coiled to strike. It took all my courage to pick it up. I glanced around to be sure no one else had seen. When I was satisfied that I was alone in the southeast corner of the courtyard, I hastily removed the ribbon, unrolled the parchment, and read its contents.

For a moment I fought to breathe. This was as bad as could be. It was a copy of a warrant for the queen’s arrest.

The roll rustled as I hid it in my sleeve. Feeling unsteady on my feet as a newborn foal, I entered the stair turret.

To escape the cooking smells that had invaded the apartments used by Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, and Catherine Howard, Queen Kathryn had asked the king for new lodgings. Within a year of her marriage, she had been installed in newly renovated, sweet-smelling chambers. She’d chosen rooms facing south, so that she had a view of the pond gardens with their flower beds surrounded by low walls and flanked by neat rows of striped poles supporting a variety of heraldic beasts.

When I reached the queen’s privy chamber, where ceilings had been raised and new partitions and wainscoting installed, creating a spacious, luxurious living space, I did not attempt speak to Her Grace directly. Instead, I sought out Jane Lisle and passed the document to her. “Do not let anyone see you read this,” I whispered.

Jane left the chamber, using the excuse of a visit to the privy. When she returned a few minutes later, her face was pale as whey. A determined gleam in her eyes, she moved purposefully among the queen’s ladies, speaking briefly to a select few. Less than a quarter of an hour later, I was summoned to the queen’s private withdrawing room. Jane Lisle, Anne Hertford, Joan Denny, and Elizabeth Tyrwhitt were there already. The queen entered through another door a moment later, attended by her sister, Anne Herbert.

When Queen Kathryn held out her hand, Jane placed the warrant in it. Disbelief warred with shock in the queen’s expression as she read the words. “Lord be merciful! His Grace means to have my head.”

The warrant passed from hand to hand to be read and exclaimed over while Queen Kathryn regained her composure. Her Grace was too strong minded to let fear paralyze her, and too intelligent to give up without trying to find a way out of her plight. She began to pace, her fingers toying with the small clock suspended from a gold chain at her waist.

She stopped in front of me. “How did you come by this, Bess?”

“You have a friend, Your Grace,” Jane said when I’d told my story. “Someone wanted you to be warned of your danger.”

“Perhaps it was the king himself,” I suggested.

Everyone turned to stare at me. I had been bold to speak without the queen’s permission. I swallowed hard, but Jane sent a reassuring smile my way. “Bess may be right. Shortly before Your Grace’s marriage, my husband heard that Bishop Gardiner was plotting to bring about Archbishop Cranmer’s downfall. The king knew of his plans but made no move to stop him. Instead His Grace played one minister against the other for his own amusement. King Henry gave Cranmer a ring, without explanation, saying only that should he ever need to prove he had His Grace’s love, he should produce it. Shortly thereafter, faced with soldiers who had arrived with a warrant for his arrest, the archbishop did just that and so won his freedom. King Henry amused himself at the expense of both prelates.”

“A cruel jest,” Lady Denny murmured, “but a true story. My husband shared this same tale with me.” Her husband, Sir Anthony Denny, was as close as any man to the king and was even authorized to sign documents with His Grace’s stamp when King Henry was unavailable to write his own name.

“Is it possible,” Jane asked, “that the king intends to toy with Your Grace in a similar way?”

“If you have offended His Grace with plain speaking,” Lady Hertford chimed in, “he may wish to punish you. But not, I think, with imprisonment or death.”

“I pray you are correct,” the queen said, “but this warrant . . .” Her voice trailed off as her hands crept to her throat.

I shivered, remembering that two of King Henry’s previous wives had been beheaded on His Grace’s orders.

“You have never betrayed the king,” Elizabeth Tyrwhitt said. “Not by word or deed.” She was a tall, thin woman, and utterly devoted to her royal mistress.

“But I have annoyed him,” Queen Kathryn whispered.

“His Grace encouraged you to dispute with him on matters of religion,” Anne Herbert reminded her. The queen’s sister, and Will’s, was a quiet little woman, adept at fading into the background, but she was flushed with anger on Queen Kathryn’s behalf.

“The truth is of little worth against the king’s whim,” Her Grace said, and resumed pacing.

“You must convince him that you are contrite,” Jane said.

“And give him cause to pity you,” Joan Denny added.

“Take to your bed, Your Grace,” Lady Tyrwhitt suggested. “Give out that your health is in a dangerous state.”

The queen sent a rueful smile her way. “Under the circumstances, that is no lie.”

“But the king has an aversion to illness,” Lady Denny objected. “Hearing that you are ill will only drive him farther away.”

“What if Your Grace’s physician tells him that your illness is caused not by some physical ailment but by distress of the mind,” I suggested.

The queen stopped pacing, her forehead creased in thought. “That ploy might succeed, especially if His Grace did arrange for you to find the warrant. He will delight in imagining me struck down by terror . . . and he will want to see the results of his little game for himself.”

It was incomprehensible to me that a man who claimed to love his wife should do such a thing. Perhaps he would not send her to the Tower and the rack, but this was torture, too, deliberate and cruel.

No wonder Will hesitated to ask favors from His Grace. King Henry would as soon give pain as pleasure. Likely he would have demanded that I share his bed, had I gone through with my plan to solicit his help. Convinced I’d had a narrow escape, I forced my thoughts back to the present crisis. The queen’s ladies were still refining my suggestion.

“By rights Your Grace should be out of your mind with fear,” the Countess of Hertford said. “A few hysterical screams would lend credence to that idea.”

“And the uproar will bring Dr. Wendy running.” Jane smiled faintly. Dr. Thomas Wendy was the fussiest of the royal physicians, always on the lookout for the first sign of some dread disease. He was also a great advocate of bleeding and purging.

“I believe I can persuade Dr. Wendy that only a visit from His Grace can cure me,” the queen said.

“But what will you say to the king when he comes?” Lady Herbert asked her sister.

“I will confess to being laid low by the terrible fear that I unintentionally displeased him. I will show myself eager to win his forgiveness. And eager, too, to please him. I will tell him how much I have missed his embraces. And since I will already, conveniently, be in my bed, perhaps he will join me there. But first,” the queen added, regarding each of the ladies of her inner circle in turn, “we must take precautions. If any of you still have in your possession any proscribed books, no matter how well hidden, you must destroy them. We cannot risk having them found by searchers.”

Nods of agreement all around proved that although these women were zealous in their religious beliefs, none was foolish enough to risk dying for them.

The queen’s gaze came to rest on me. “You’d best leave now, Bess, but I thank you for your loyalty.”

I was glad to escape. The queen’s plan was dangerous to everyone in her confidence. I returned to the presence chamber, found the embroidery I had abandoned hours earlier, and waited.

Within a quarter hour, loud shrieks and lamentations issued from the queen’s bedchamber. They would be just as clearly audible in the king’s apartments, adjacent to the queen’s on the other side. It was not long before Dr. Wendy, his face deeply creased with worry, hurried through the presence chamber on his way to the queen. When he emerged a short time later, he looked even more troubled.

A nerve-racking hour followed before the king appeared. I suspected it had taken that long to hoist His Grace to his feet so that he could hobble from his apartments to the queen’s. He might have gone to her with less difficulty by using the connecting room between his secret lodgings and hers, but he seemed to want the entire court to bear witness to his willingness to visit his ailing wife.

His Grace did not stay long, but the next evening Queen Kathryn was admitted to King Henry’s bedchamber. I shuddered to think what Her Grace might have to do to win back her husband’s affection. Submitting to his views on religion would be the least of it! But I was as relieved as anyone else when they appeared fully reconciled the next morning.

The following day, the king accompanied the queen and her maids of honor into the garden. King Henry found walking difficult, so they sat side by side on chairs, enjoying the view of the river. I had just settled myself next to Alys on a blanket spread on the ground when a contingent of uniformed guards from the Tower of London approached. The lord chancellor led them. He carried the warrant for the queen’s arrest in one hand. By his somber expression, he anticipated carrying out an unpleasant but necessary duty. He stopped short, his eyes widening in alarm, when he saw that the king was holding his wife’s hand.

Showing a great lack of common sense, he still attempted to make an arrest.

King Henry seized the warrant, read what it said, and turned purple with rage. “Knave! Arrant knave! Beast! Fool!” King Henry bellowed so loudly that his words echoed off the walls of the palace.

Alys and I exchanged a nervous look. This roaring seemed to bode well for the queen, but the king’s temper was always uncertain. And he had signed the warrant.

“Get out of my sight!” King Henry shouted.

Only after the lord chancellor and the guards had gone did I breathe freely again.