The Rose Without a Thorn

The Last Day

I HAD ASKED that my good friend, the scribe, might come to me and that I might be alone with her. Close by, Jane Rochford was sleeping. They had given her something to quieten her, for a wild mood was on her.

She came and we talked in the way we had done while I told her the story of my life and relived all that had led me to this room in the Tower.

I said to her: “My dear friend, you have listened and you have written it down, as I could not have done. Thus I have lived it all again. This is the last time we two shall be together, for tomorrow I shall be no more.

“They have sent Jane to me. She is in the cell nearby. Tomorrow she is to lead me to the scaffold, and when they have cut off my head, they will do the same to her.

“Poor Jane! She is in a sorry state. It is the guilt, you see. Perhaps I should feel guilty, but strangely enough, I cannot. I loved too readily. There are some of us who are like that. They call it sin. Yet it was love. I loved them both. Francis cared for me. We had beautiful moments together. He went to Ireland to make a fortune, and it was all that he might marry me. His face was soft and gentle when he gave me the French fennel and other gifts. But Thomas was my true love. We would have been happy together. I even thought Manox was handsome once, and he was a beguiling musician. And the King … he was old and not handsome when I knew him, but he was so powerful, and power is such that it can have an effect on a woman’s senses. I loved them all. I wonder who decided that love was a sin?

“But enough of this. There is little time left. This will be my last day on Earth, for tomorrow I shall be with my Maker. It is strange that I can say that with a certain calm. I could not have done so two months ago.

“It all changed when Thomas and Francis died.”

Jane came to me during the day. There was a certain madness in her eyes. She was fearful of death; she thought it was retribution for what she had done. How terrible for Jane to have that on her conscience, but it had worried her very little until she was facing death. I suppose she was thinking that it might have been so different. If George Boleyn had been her devoted husband, he would not have ended his days on the scaffold. What she had implied about the relationship between brother and sister would not have affected Anne. The King had wanted Anne out of the way so that he might many Jane Seymour—so she was doomed.

I wondered who would be the next wife when I had gone. But there was no time to waste in such speculation.

Jane said to me, as she had said twenty times before: “I have brought myself to this end because of what I did to my husband and his sister. This is God’s punishment, the vengeance of the Lord.”

I thought she was going off into one of her fits of madness, and that was when I made them take her to her cell and give her something to quieten her.

Thus I was left alone for my last talk with my friend.

That morning I had them bring the block to me. I was not sure of the procedure, for I had never seen an execution. I wanted to be sure how I had to act. I wondered if they would blindfold me and if I should have to be led.

There would be people there to see me, and I did not wish to do something unseemly. And there was something else. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to be calm. I wondered if my uncle would be there. I felt more angry against my uncle than any other. The only time he ever spoke kindly to me was when the King wanted to marry me and when I became Queen. My poor grandmother was in that fearsome place … sick with pain and fear. She was his stepmother. How could he care so little? His father must have loved her, and he did nothing but revile her.

I hated him. I should not do so. One must not hate people when one is about to die.

I put my hands on the block. This was where my cousin had lain her head in the last minutes of her life. She had been brave. She would be. I hoped I could be as she had been. They told me the same block was used for the Countess of Salisbury. And now … it is for me.

Good-bye, my friend. Do not grieve for me when I am gone. I believe that God will judge me less harshly than my fellow men have done. He will understand that I meant no harm to any. He gave me the gift to love and it was love that destroyed me. Perhaps I shall be with Thomas, and I should be happier there, no matter where, than in any other place that could be found for me on Earth.