But they are dead, I have to remind myself. Thomas wails in the distance, his voice piercing my heart like a sword.
The ladies pull me into my chamber and shut the door behind me. This chamber is not the prison cell I had imagined, but it feels icy in spite of the fire raging in the hearth. I step into the room and hear muttering. Jane is seated in a corner. As I approach her, she wails, cringing away from me. Her eyes are wide and unblinking, and foam collects in the corner of her mouth. I know the look in her eyes.
“You stepped into it, didn’t you?” I ask her. “You stepped into the blackness?”
But it’s too late to pull her out, now. Mary puts her arm around my shoulders and pulls me away.
“Catherine is here—Catherine is here! The king’s beloved is here!” Jane laughs suddenly, her eyes are wide and glassy, unfocused. “I heard that the king called for a sword, to slay you himself! He would slay his own heart if need be. He would cut out his own heart if it beat in a way that did not please him.”
“That is what is required of a king,” I murmur.
“Then you forgive him, Catherine? You forgive the man that used you so rudely and now throws you to the dogs?”
I am too tired to answer her, too tired to consider my own emotions.
“Well, I don’t forgive
you!
” she screams viciously. I jump back in fear, and the other ladies crowd around me, pulling me back.
“It is your fault that I’m here. You were never good at writing letters, Catherine. You were never very good. That’s why I was there. The duchess put me beside you, to watch you. From the very beginning. I was to watch your every move. Just as I did with your cousin Anne!”
“You did a fine job of watching me, didn’t you?”
“I saw everything you did—you know what I saw.” She laughs at this again, tilting her head back with the force of her laughter. “I was to watch you—not to end up here!”
The ladies pull me away, pull me into my bedchamber. I can hear Jane beyond the door, weeping and muttering to herself in her own darkness.
I lean against a wall as the ladies scurry around the room, stoking the flames in the hearth and turning down the bedclothes. They act as if I am a guest of honor, not a girl condemned. I press my hands to the rough stone wall and close my eyes.
My fingers find scratches, etchings of the names of those who came and went before me. I trace them with my fingertip:
Bishop Fisher, Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Margaret Pole.
IT IS DIFFICULT
to convince yourself, when you are healthy and lovely and young, that soon you will die. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, but I inspect my hands, my arms, my belly. I’m still a marvel of youth and health. Where is death? Death is not here.
“We shall wait now for Cranmer to set the date,” I tell the ladies. “I’m not sure how long we will have to wait.”
Mathilde rises from her chair and stands beside me. She takes my hands in hers. “I think you will not have long to wait, Catherine. And there is something that you must understand.” She pauses for a moment, and looks directly into my eyes. “There will be no reprieve for you.”
“What?” My throat is cracked, dry. “What are you saying?”
“We’ve had hope, between us, but that hope is gone. I want you to prepare yourself for what is to come.”
I feel my mouth twist in anger—how dare she look inside me and see my one last hope, and destroy it? But I don’t know what to say. I squeeze her hands in mine.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her eyes soft as a doe’s. “You wanted me to tell you the truth. It is the least that I can do.”
“Will you pray for me? In spite of what I’ve done, in spite of the fact that I may deserve—”
“Of course we will pray for you.” Mary and Elsie join us, their hands on my arms. “We will pray for you, Your Grace, and we will weep.”
“And what happens then? When it is over?”
“When it is all over,” Mathilde says carefully, “and your soul has departed this earth, we will be as kind to you in death as we have been now. We will bury you ourselves, with a prayer.”
There is nothing I can say. I fold myself into their arms.
FROM THE WINDOW
of my chambers I have a perfect view of the scaffold being built, not twenty yards beyond where I stand. I can hear the banging of hammer against wood all day. The workers continue late into the night, anxious to finish their construction. I watch them now, their forms move like shadows against the deep twilight. Beyond the scaffold another twenty yards is the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula—St. Peter in chains.
“You will be laid to rest next to your infamous cousin Queen Anne Boleyn,” a voice says from the darkness behind me. “Overshadowed, both in life and in death.”
Anne smiles, her teeth gleaming white, reflected beside me in the dark window. The ladies have fallen asleep before the fire. The familiar madness has returned: the black hole is in the ground, waiting for me. I’ve been sidestepping it since I arrived here, with their help. But now, with Anne smiling at me, I can feel it again—a deep void, a spiraling fear opening inside of me.
“What will you do, Catherine? What will you say?” she asks, sidling up to me. “I gave a fine speech before the swordsman did his job. No one present will forget my grace, my poise, in the last moments of my life.”
“Yes, I heard about that. You were an actress up to the very end.” I turn and meet Anne’s gaze, not daring to turn away from the sharp wildness blazing from her eyes. “Maybe I am done with acting, with playing a role. Maybe now I can be myself again, the girl I used to be.”
“What good is that?” she asks me, her maniacal laughter bubbling up in her throat, threatening to break free. “What good will that do? No one will remember it, Catherine. No one will be impressed with that.”
“You made a very impressive speech, it’s true. But it didn’t change anything for you, did it? You were still executed. You’re still dead.”
Anne opens her mouth for a bitter retort, but her voice doesn’t register in my ears. The image of her dissipates like so much smoke before my eyes. It’s not really Anne, after all, just my image of her—her perfection, her triumph, her condemnation. She has haunted me from the moment I first laid eyes upon her, a glittering image gliding upon the Thames. Now she is gone; I’ve no need for her judgment anymore.
I look across to the chapel, alone. Saint Peter did not fear death, and God sent an angel to release him from his chains. I don’t expect an angel to save me, but the least I can do is to prepare myself. I draw a great breath, slowly; my chest expands. I must have peace, now. It is all there is left to me—but that does not mean it is nothing. It is a far greater thing than I ever realized.
Turning away from the window, I gaze around the room. Mary and Mathilde are asleep before the fire. Elsie is asleep upon the bed, curled in exactly the position I found her when I awoke beside her, her arm slung over me. I sit at the small desk in this room and scrawl upon a piece of parchment a list of notes: what gowns and trinkets left to me will be granted to these three ladies, upon my death.
It is very well to flatter and cater to a woman who is royalty, it is quite another to stand beside the condemned. For this small thing, I am so grateful. My heart grows in my chest at the thought of it, until I fear it might burst. There is danger there—I press my cold hands to my still-dry eyes. Once I fall apart, there will be no putting me back together again.
I wonder how history will remember me. Will the details be obscured, exaggerated by time, or will all be washed away, forgotten as the years pass? My portrait was never painted, and only one small coin bears my royal symbol, to remind everyone that I was once queen. That I existed at all.
I only wish I had more time, but I know this wish is not unique to me. I would have liked to have been a mother. Infants appreciate the world around them in ways that are easily forgotten—its brightness and its newness is their birthright. I think of the things that I loved as a child: the tall grass where I would curl up and sleep, the rough cracked bark of the trees I would climb, the trailing branches of the willow tree, the sun on my neck, the wind in my hair.
All of my life I felt as if I belonged to someone else: my father’s pretty daughter, my grandmother’s charge, Anne Boleyn’s cousin, betrothed to Francis, beloved of Thomas, then wife to King Henry. I think back now to when I was truly myself, and I can see it in my mind: I’m a child, lying in the grass and singing, the face of a kitten moving close and sniffing the tip of my nose. I had nothing then, or I thought I had nothing, but really I had everything: I had myself. That was truly me, on my own and complete. It makes me smile, just to think of it.
CRANMER ARRIVES
TO inform me that my execution has been scheduled for tomorrow morning.
“You must prepare your soul for death,” he says.
“How does one do such a thing?” But he has no guidance to give me. He stands before me, his palms open in a sign of offering. I ponder this, at a loss for words. I stare out the window, thinking.
I hear it, suddenly: a roar, from somewhere else in the Tower. It’s coming from the menagerie—that beautiful, majestic lion that the king had encaged until he became a sad, withered creature. He roars again, and I can feel it as if the sound is moving through my own body, a powerful feeling that makes my breath shudder in my chest. Perhaps the old beast is not so broken, after all. Perhaps there are still some things left to us, even in imprisonment: our courage, our dignity.
I turn to Cranmer and blink, slowly.
“Bring the block to my room,” I tell him.
I SIT BEFORE THE MIRROR and glance at myself, warily. The room is dark, only a few candles are lit. My hair is matted and my eyes shadowed, my skin is pale; the other half of my face is submerged in darkness. I barely recognize myself.
We all harbor the potential for evil within us. The royal court that I dreamed of for so long nurtures this evil. All of the dashing, handsome courtiers and beautiful ladies are consumed by darkness, consumed by themselves, harboring treason and betrayal in their hearts—betrayal even of those they love, for the sake of power. And I am one of them. I am no better than any of the most greedy, the most vile.
But at least I did not betray my love, my true love. No, he did that for me. Thomas betrayed me. But that can’t matter anymore—it is too painful to matter. It is over and done.
The life I have left to me now, brief though it is, is mine alone. I need counsel from no one on my decisions. What will I do now, on my own, with my life and with my death? I will stand and face it all, for that is all there is left for me to do. I have my dignity, something I’ve thought little of before this moment.
I request a basin of cold water with which to wash my face. I have not washed properly in weeks, not wanting the bracing cold of water to wake me, to wash the sleep from my eyes, but I know it’s time. My gaze is cold and clear. I do not cry, knowing that to do so would be to split myself in two in fear and sorrow. The one thing I can do is remain whole. A strange calm washes over me. I am entering a new stage of my life: like Lambeth, like court, like the king’s bed. And like all the others, this next step requires me to leave the past behind. I am still an actress, given a script I have no choice but to play out tomorrow upon the great, grim stage of the Tower Green. Death is a foreign role, and therefore frightening to me. That is why it is frightening to us all.
I settle my neck upon the block simply to know how it is done, to know that I can do it without crumbling. With practice, I can do it like a queen. This is how it is done, easily, and then it will be over. All of this fear will be over. I don’t know where I am going after this—to heaven or hell—but no one can know that for certain. All I can do now is pray, and hope that it will do me some good. I settle my neck upon the block, again, again. All I can do is practice until I know that I will be able to do it right.
XL
February 13 is a cold day, the earth crisp and white with snow. I wear a white gown, a simple silver circlet for the day of my death. It is pure, virginal. My hair is tied up, away from my neck.
The sun is bright and dazzling reflected off the white snow. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the sun. It makes my eyes hurt to look at it as I step out onto the Tower Green.
Lady Rochford walks behind me; I can hear her sniveling, but I block the sound from my ears. Ravens caw like squalling children, circling overhead. My ladies cluster around me like a shield from the press of the assembled crowd. As I make my way to the scaffold I keep my eyes averted from the block, the hooded executioner, the people squinting at me in the sun. My body feels both heavy and light all at once; my feet are heavy, shuffling along the path.
We pause before the scaffold. The ladies’ faces are smeared with tears. I had thought to thank them here, but I cannot force the words from my throat. I touch their faces with my cold fingertips. The wind catches the hems of our dresses and lifts them like clouds, swirling and billowing around us. They look like three angels, standing around me. And they are here to watch my ascent.
My feet are so heavy I can hardly lift them. The ladies hook their arms beneath mine and help me up the stairs of the scaffold. There is straw spread on the ground before us, around the block; it has a dull, ordinary gleam in the pale light. The murmuring of the crowd increases: the faces spread out in an ocean before me, undulating waves. When I turn to face them, I see that their faces are sad, dismayed, not angry. I feel the tears well in my eyes.
Be brave.
I have decided to be brave. My breath forms a cloud before my face in the cold air—I can see life puffing out of me. I had never thought to look at it, before.
I place a coin in the hand of the executioner, just as I rehearsed last night. I grant him my forgiveness for what he is about to do. His gloved hand feels rough against my hand of ice.