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

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.