Boleyn Traitor, page 49
I ask for books to study and papers to write, but they say I can only have paper and ink to write my confession. I am so furious at this that I scream at my maid that I am the best-educated woman in England – except for Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More – and she curtseys and dashes out of the room. The next thing I know, in comes Sir Thomas Wriothesley with a writing desk and pen and ink and papers, to ask me what part Margaret Roper played in this adultery.
‘She is as guilty as me of being a clever woman,’ I snap.
‘What do you know of her?’ he asks keenly.
‘You will drive me quite mad!’ I say unguardedly. ‘Margaret did nothing. The dinner is ill-cooked so I cannot eat, and you have lodged me in my husband’s rooms – I sleep in my husband’s bed …’
He looks quite shocked, and then he makes a note on the paper. ‘D’you speak of Margaret Howard? And George Boleyn – you know that he is dead? D’you remember that you are a widow, Lady Rochford?’
We look blankly at each other. For once in my life, I cannot think. What is this fool asking me? Why drag Margaret Howard into it – who never did anything in her life but what her mother-in-law ordered? I never saw her in Kitty’s rooms after she presented Francis Dereham.
‘Margaret?’ I ask him, buying time, but really, I cannot think what he wants of me. ‘Which Margaret?’
‘Do you know the name of the king?’
‘I should think I do,’ I say bitterly. ‘And the queen’s name is Katheryn.’ I cannot hold back a bitter laugh. ‘Katheryn again. Katheryn the second.’
He makes another note; his breath is coming faster. I see him glance to the door. ‘I am going to send a kind gentleman to talk to you,’ he says. ‘Do you understand me, Lady Rochford?’
‘I don’t want to talk to a kind gentleman. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I can’t eat the dinner here. I can’t sleep in my husband’s bed. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay here for six months. I want to go home.’
‘Why six months?’ he asks quickly.
I look at him mutinously. ‘Why not?’
‘Where is your home?’ he asks, as if he does not know what I did to win the ownership of Blickling Hall.
‘You know as well as I do!’ I exclaim. I think of my house and lands at Blickling and that they were given to me by Lord Cromwell in return for saying nothing. But I chose to live in palaces, I have spent more time at Greenwich Palace than anywhere else. My certainty dies away.
‘Here,’ I say desolately, thinking that this is my family vault; my husband and sister-in-law are buried in the Tower chapel. ‘This is my family home, don’t you think? I am in the Boleyn rooms? Isn’t it our name on the wall? Isn’t it our family vault across the green?’
He is stuffing papers and inkpot into his neat little writing desk and cramming down the lid on them. ‘I will send Dr Butts,’ he tells me. ‘For your appetite and sleep. You can tell him. He is the one to judge … I will ask him to attend you …’
Holding his writing desk, asking for no help from his spy, my maid, he kicks his booted heel to hammer against the door, and the guard throws it open. I think I have never seen him so flustered. I laugh out loud; it is something to see Thomas Wriothesley running from my room like a scolded girl. I cannot think what is wrong with him.
I turn to my maid, the spy, and I see she has the same look as Wriothesley. She is terrified. She is terrified of being alone with me.
Then it comes to me. I give a little tut at my slowness and stupidity. Wriothesley thinks that they have driven me mad, that I am mad. This girl thinks I am mad, and she is locked up with a madwoman who might turn violent. And I – fool that I am – should have played mad as my last great performance the moment I arrived. A madman cannot be interrogated; a madman cannot be accused; a madman cannot be executed. How could I have forgotten this? I should have told Kitty, who is half-mad with natural silliness anyway. But I shall be mad until the king dies, and no one will accuse me of anything, and they will send me somewhere pleasant to stay, and I will slowly – very slowly – recover my senses.
I wear the mask of Dionysus – god of ecstasy and madness – and slowly, I let myself slide into fantasy. At once, my appetite returns, and I drink wine, mulled ale, and twice-brewed beer. I honour Dionysus by being drunk from the moment that I rise to loudly say my prayers in the morning until bedtime, when I sometimes forget to get undressed.
I feel my own imagination spinning loose, and for the first time in my life, I am not a courtier. I do not say what the king wants to hear – I speak for my own ears – I say what I like. Inside this prison, I am free for the first time. My room gets brighter and darker through the day; it is the only way I know the passing of time, because I cannot seem to keep up with the chimes of the Tower bells. Facing north, overlooking the green, it is always cold. I insist that the fire is lit in the grate before I will get up in the morning. ‘I’m cold,’ I say. ‘Cold.’ It is dark. Sometimes, I see a sunset in the evening sky, but it is dark when I wake in the morning. ‘I’m dark,’ I say. ‘Dark.’
I am not quite sure who lives here with me and who is passing through as a visitor. No one is ever properly announced. George, my husband, is here most evenings; he’s always looking out of the window for someone to come with a pardon. ‘I will come,’ I tell him. ‘I will see the king. I will tell Jane Seymour to take off her hood and let down her hair and ask for pardon, for you and for Anne.’
Sir Thomas More usually comes around dawn and wakes me to the cold room and the striking of the clock at six or nine, or it might be midnight – I can’t count the chimes all the way through. ‘How come you’re so clever and yet you didn’t say “no” to the king?’ I ask him. ‘Why does nobody ever say “no” to him?’ That defeats him. ‘Silence won’t save you,’ I tell him. ‘I am silence.’
Dr Butts comes, as someone promised me he would. He asks me very dull questions about the date, as if I would know, living here in dark and light as I do! He asks me the name of my father and where is my house? I say: if he does not know that, he must be as mad as I am. Surely he knows I have no father? I am an orphan. Who has ever come to court to see me for fatherly love? My father only ever comes to behead someone. As for my house – I tell him the little joke that this must be my house, since my family vault is across the green, and my family crest on the wall; but he does not laugh. He looks at me very gravely, and when I go, he presses my hand. ‘I will say you are unfit to testify,’ he promises. ‘But take care of yourself, Lady Rochford. Do not melt into your mask.’
He is not my only visitor. My Lord Cromwell never comes, and yet I would like to see him. I don’t like to meet the others. So many others troop through my rooms and through my dreams at night: the Carthusians, Bishop Fisher, Geoffrey Pole with a bread knife in his fat chest, his mother Lady Margaret Pole, with her old neck hacked to pieces. No one said ‘no’ for her, and we all should have ‘no’ when they came for Lady Margaret.
‘I’m not “no”,’ I tell my maid. ‘I am silence. But silence doesn’t save you, either.’
I catch her writing down declensions of Latin verbs, which I recite to show I remember everything. She mistakes Latin for the raving of a madwoman – she is such a fool.
‘I am mad,’ I say, to reassure her. ‘Quite mad.’
Of course I am mad. I cannot comprehend that I am here, in my dead husband’s bedroom, wrongly accused as he was, threatened with execution as he was, hoping for mercy from a merciless tyrant, as he did. Of course I am mad. Nobody could be at the court of this king unless they were out of their wits. We are all far from our humble beginnings; we are all out of our sphere; we are all masked, disguised, tutored, and tortured into insane shapes to make him look handsome, powerful, loveable. We all practise carols of praise to him, telling him over and over again, repeating like madmen and madwomen: what a great king he is, how wise, how gifted, how loveable.
Dawns come and go with Sir Thomas More. Two of them? Perhaps three?
‘Who is the King of England?’ my maid asks me. ‘Who is the King of France?’
‘Don’t say he’s been arrested, too?’ I am staggered. ‘On what charge?’
She shakes her head, angry with me as a keeper is angry with his madman, and she goes out of the room to tell someone that I am no better, that it is as Dr Butts says, that I cannot be questioned and I cannot be accused.
THIS MORNING – I know it is morning, because Anne walked under my window out to the scaffold on Tower Green at nine of the clock – the girl comes to me and says very loudly, as if I am deaf: ‘Get your cape on. Put on your boots. Pull up the hood.’
‘Am I going home?’ I ask, in my new courtier voice, very high and pleasing. ‘To Blickling?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she says, so readily that I know that she is lying.
She pushes my two gowns and my linen into a sack with my Bible and my hoods and my shoes. All jumbled, and the gowns will crease.
‘I don’t want to go without George,’ I say.
‘Oh, he’ll come later,’ she assures me. ‘You come now, and he’ll be along later.’
It is comical how courtiers will agree with anything. George my husband has been dead for five and a half years. I laugh at her folly, and she looks at me oddly.
I say: ‘You know, when you see a madman, you should just say “no”,’ and she hustles me out of the door, where a guard leads the way, and one comes behind. I don’t really want to walk past Tower Green, but there is no scaffold built for any execution, and there are no ghosts, just the grass growing, winter sere.
We go down the stone steps to the water gate; the tide is low, slack, and the plain barge without a standard bobs at its mooring. The maid hurries me on board, and the guard comes with us. I pull up the hood of my cape; it is bitterly cold, and the mist lies along the river like a wraith. I think it is very remiss of them not to send the Howard barge.
‘Very discourteous,’ I say to the girl, and she says ‘Yes, m’lady,’ and takes a stool beside my chair.
The water gate rolls up, creaking on its green wet chains and dripping from its points. The barge pushes off, and the rowers take us out into the river, where the tide is turning to take us upstream. They close the shutters so that no one can see me, but there is no need for them to take such care. It’s not as if I am Lady Margaret Pole. She was of the old royal family, and governess to Lady Mary, mother to a cardinal – and still nobody said ‘no’ to her shipping and arrest and death. Nobody will say ‘no’ for me.
‘Nobody ever says “no”,’ I tell the girl.
I think we are going upstream to Windsor Castle or perhaps Hampton Court. Perhaps the court is spending Christmas at Hampton Court, and they need me to plan the masquing. I am not sure how my mask of Dionysus-madness will fit a Christmas masque, but then I realise that everyone is mad at court anyway. The mask they wear is one of sanity, so that no one can ever mirror to the king his own mad face, his own mad will.
But we are not going to court. We pull into the north bank at the water stairs of a private house, and as I climb up from the river, I recognise the long garden and the handsome face of Russell House, and there is Lady Russell, who I last saw at Chenies, welcoming me to her London house.
She leads the way up through the hall, up the stairs, to my own rooms: a bedroom and a privy chamber that overlooks the garden and the busy sunlit river, and I realise, with a dawning sense of unreality, that I have done it! I have pulled off the greatest performance of my life. This was my finest dance, my wittiest script, my greatest masque. I am to be free; I am forgiven. I am officially mad, and as a madwoman, I am safe.
The only disadvantage with this part is that I cannot seem to stop playing it. Like all courtiers, I become what I was pretending to be. I spent my life pretending to be a loyal servant to an ideal king. I pretended I did not notice as he grew to be a monster. Now he is a monster, and I am madly loyal still.
Russell House, London, December
1541
I LIVE A SOLITARY life in Russell House. I only see his lordship at midday on Sunday when we all attend chapel, and he comes to my rooms after divine service and asks me: am I well?
‘Yes, I thank you,’ I say cautiously, for I think it safest to be mad until I receive a written pardon or the king is dead – whichever comes sooner.
‘Can you tell me any more about the queen?’ he asks.
‘I can tell you about all of them. There have been many, and I have served them all.’
He looks at me, his brow a little furrowed. ‘Be careful what you say,’ he warns me.
‘Superfluous,’ I remark. ‘We are always careful what we say.’
‘Tell me about Katheryn Howard? Did she plan the death of the king?’
It is against the law to speak of the death of the king. ‘Shush,’ I say to him. ‘Don’t say that. Remember – never say that.’
He flinches. ‘Jane, if you would hold on to what is real and give evidence against her, you would be pardoned,’ he says. ‘Do you understand that, Jane? Say that she was adulterous and hoping for the king’s death, and you can go free.’
‘Oh, certainly!’ I say helpfully. ‘Tell me! I will say anything! Anything the king wants me to say. I cannot imagine my own death, you know. It is impossible to imagine your own death.’
‘You must tell the truth,’ he says. ‘A lie won’t save you. You must tell me truly – did she bed Thomas Culpeper?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say simply. ‘They kissed and said they would die for love of each other.’ I smile at him. ‘Are they going to die for love?’ I ask. ‘Can I go to court for Christmas now?’
CHRISTMAS IS AT Greenwich this year, but although I told Lord Russell what he said he wanted, I am not invited. Nor are Lady Russell and her husband, and she tells me that the king wants no company and no celebrations of the season.
‘But he will want gifts,’ I caution her. ‘He can live without dancing but not without gifts. He needs sacrifices. Human sacrifice.’
She looks oddly at me and says: ‘Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham have been executed.’
‘See?’ I say.
She says gently: ‘Jane, if you are pretending madness to escape trial and execution, it’s doing you no good. Come back to your wits if you can.’
I laugh. ‘I am the best educated woman in England but for Thomas More’s daughter,’ I tell her. ‘I could not lose my wits; they are all I am. I could not be a courtier without them, and if I were not a courtier, I would be nothing at all.’
‘Jane, I must warn you, we won’t house you forever. You don’t want to be begged as a fool, and go and live in a strange household as their idiot, do you?’
‘No,’ I agree. ‘But I was sent to live in a strange household as an idiot when I was a little girl of just eleven. It’s all I know, really.’
She shakes her head, and I think: but I know, and you do not, that the king will die in four and a half months’ time. ‘Will you keep me until May Day? I think I will be well by May Day.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It’s not my choice. Go to chapel and pray for your wits to come back to you, Jane.’
‘I am pretending nothing,’ I assure her. ‘For the first time in my life, I have stopped pretending. I am in my right mind for the first time ever.’
She shakes her head. ‘He won’t let you stay with us, Jane, mad or not.’
‘Oh no,’ I assure her. ‘I shall be back at court when he chooses his next wife. I always serve the Queen of England. He’s never had a queen but I’ve been her lady, teaching her never to say “no” – whether it’s a baby that he wants, or a divorce. He will choose another wife, and when he wants her to confess to a precontract or accuses her of treason or heresy, I will make up the evidence against her. Do you know yet who it will be?’
She looks deeply shocked. ‘Silence! Madness does not excuse you! Go to your rooms!’
I really don’t know what has upset her – the certainty of my return to court, or the certainty of another queen.
‘I’m not mad to say the king will marry again,’ I say quietly, as I go. ‘I know his mind as well as I know my own. He cannot live without a woman far superior to him, a woman to humiliate. He cannot bear his impotence without a beautiful woman to blame. He cannot bear his own rot without a healthy body beside him.’
She claps her hands over her ears and shouts at her lady-in-waiting: ‘See Lady Rochford back to her room! I won’t hear this.’
I curtsey to her and smile at them all. ‘Good day,’ I say.
Russell House, London, January
1542
I RECEIVE NO NEW translation from my father in the new year, and I see that he does not set his hand to the machinery of court, not even when it is his daughter caught in the gears. Nothing from any of the Howards. Not so much as a ribbon from Mary Boleyn – ‘it’s Mrs Stafford now!’ – my sister-in-law. I conclude that I am cast off, declared mad, and quite forgotten. Dr Butts, the king’s own physician, comes to visit and asks me what season it is, and what time of day, if I am a married woman or a widow, if I know the King of England?
I laugh and tell him that it is cold winter, Tudor winter, and there will never be a May Day for Henry again. The summer will bring the Sweat – the disease that came in with the Tudors. The winter will bring floods – we have not had good weather since King Richard was ridden down into mud. I tell him that once I was a wife – does he not remember my wedding? But now I am a widow, my husband killed by the king. The king is Henry – I know this well enough, because I am a widow thanks to him. I know him better than anyone in England knows him. I was raised to serve him, swore to die for him, and everyone I love has been killed by him. He only spares me because I am mad – he has driven all his courtiers quite out of our wits, and I am the only one who knows this.
