Виктория Холт - The Lady in the Tower

What a terrible day that was! The most wretched of my life.

They had erected a scaffold on Tower Hill. My brother went first— my dear, sweet brother, whom I had loved so dearly, the one of all on Earth whom I trusted completely. They said he died calmly and most bravely.

Poor Francis Weston. His family was desolate. His wife and mother entreated the King to spare his life. They were rich and they offered 100,000 crowns for him. Henry rejected the offer.

And Weston, Norris and Brereton submitted their heads to the ax.

Mark Smeaton was hanged. I had hoped he would retract his admission of guilt on the scaffold.

“Has he cleared me?” I asked.

They told me he had not.

“His soul will suffer for the false witness he has borne,” I said.

Mary Wyatt laid a hand on my shoulder, and when I lifted my eyes, I saw tears on her cheeks.

“Do not weep, Mary,” I said. “My brother and the rest are now, I doubt not, before the great King, and I shall follow tomorrow.”

When death is close, one thinks back over the past, and what looms large in one's mind are the actions one regrets.

I wished that I had been a better person. I could see clearly now my folly at every turn. I am not sure whether any action of mine could have altered my fate. I was dealing with a man who was corrupted by the great power he possessed, a mean, selfish man, a monster of a man, a murderer.

I had never really wanted him. He had forced himself upon me. I had been enamored of pomp and power, I admit. I had grasped at those things in life which had seemed the greatest prizes, for I had been blinded by the glitter of all that had been laid before me. I had been tempted, as Christ was by Satan, but I had not had the good sense to turn away from temptation.

And I had done many cruel things.

I had hated Katharine. I had hated the Princess Mary. True, they had been no good friends to me. How could they be, when I was the one whom they accused of robbing them of their rights?

But I could have been kinder to Mary.

How I had disliked that girl. I had wanted to humiliate her. I wanted her out of the way because I wanted her position for my daughter.

I asked Lady Kingston to come to me.

I made her sit, which she was reluctant to do. She still regarded me as the Queen, and that was my chair in which nobody sat but myself.

I said: “My title has gone. I am condemned to death. All I wish now is to clear my conscience.”

So I forced her to sit and I knelt before her. I asked her, as in the presence of God and His angels, to go from me to the Princess Mary and to kneel before her as I now knelt before her , and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs I had done her.

“Until that is done, my conscience cannot be stilled,” I told her.

She promised me she would do this, and I knew she would, for Lady Kingston was a good woman.

This is my last day on Earth. Tomorrow I shall be gone. I am twenty-nine years of age. It is young to die.

I have lost my beloved brother. I shall never see my child again. I pray for her and I have exhorted Lady Bryan to care for her. She will know what to say when Elizabeth asks why I do not come to her.

A sword has arrived, especially for me. It comes from France. I did not want the ax. It is a last concession from the King.

Kingston came to see me.

I said to him: “I hear I shall die before noon tomorrow. I am sorry. I had hoped to be dead by this time and past my pain.”

“The pain is very little, Madam,” he told me. “It is over in an instant. The executioner is very good.”

I put my hands about my neck and laughed. “And I have a little neck,” I said.

He turned away. I think he was moved by my calm acceptance of death.

I wondered whether I should request to see Elizabeth. Would that request be granted? I wondered. Henry would have decided.

What should I say to her? How does one say goodbye to a child? “My darling, I shall not see you again. Tomorrow they are going to cut off my head. Your father, in the great goodness of his heart, has allowed me to escape the terrible death by fire. He will be content to have my head removed by a very fine sword which has been sent from France for the purpose.”

Now I was getting hysterical.

I must not see Elizabeth. I could trust Lady Bryan.

I wrote a letter—not to the King but to be shown to him. I would ask Mary to give it to one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.

“Commend me to His Majesty and tell him that he hath been ever constant in his career of advancing me; from private gentlewoman he made me a marquess; from a marquess to a queen; and now he hath no higher honor of degree, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.”

I hoped these words would make a mark on that conscience of his. I hoped they would be so telling that he would not be able to shrug them aside. I hoped he would be haunted by them for a long time to come.

There were moments when I longed to see him, that I might say to him what was in my mind, tell him that I saw clearly behind the mask of geniality—though that had been used less and less as time passed. Bluff King Hal was Henry the all-powerful, the selfish monster, the murderer.

I did not so much hate as despise him. He would be remembered throughout the ages to come as the King who, because of his carnal desires, had discarded the wife of twenty years on a trumped-up charge; and having succeeded in that he murdered his second. I wondered what would be the fate of the next… and the next… and the next…

But I must calm myself. I must prepare myself for departure.

I would dress with care. I should be elegant to the end. I should wear a robe of black damask with a white cape, and my hat with ornamental coifs under it.

I would calm myself. Indeed—but for leaving Elizabeth—I should have gone gratefully to my death. I would not want to live again through the last year of my life.

Perhaps I shall not be forgotten, but remembered as the Queen who was murdered because she stood in the way of one who had the power, cruelly and most unjustly, to murder those who were an encumbrance to him.

I did not retire that night. What use? Tomorrow I should no longer need sleep.

I was inspired to express my feelings in verse.

Oh, death rock me to sleep [I wrote]

Bring on my quiet rest ,

Let pass my very guiltless ghost

Out of my careful breast .

The clocks have struck midnight. The new day has come.

Very soon now they will be leading me out to the Green. Before this day is over, my life will be no more.

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Bigland, Eileen (editor), Henry VIII

Bowle, John, Henry VIII

Bruce, Marie Louise, The Making of Henry VIII

———, Anne Boleyn

Castries, Duc de (translated by Anne Dobell), Lives of the Kings and Queens of France

Cavendish, George, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey

Chamberlin, Frederick, The Private Character of Henry VIII

Chambers, R.W., Thomas More

Fisher, H.A.L., Political History of England

Froude, James Anthony, The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

———, History of England

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———, Letters of Royal Illustrious Ladies