Page 77 of The Queen’s Witch

1536

“The king is dead!”

The cry flew through the halls of Greenwich Palace. Men and women rushed toward the tiltyard. I grabbed a page, who swore at me and tried to break free, but he was a child and I easily held him pinned against a wall. “What happened? Tell me!”

“The king fell from his horse in the joust! He is senseless! Let me go!”

I did, and slipped to the edge of the crowd gathered outside the king’s chamber. Inside, men shouted contradictory orders. More men elbowed their way in or out of the room: the king’s confessor, his physicians, Thomas Cromwell, George Boleyn, the duke of Norfolk, Edward and Thomas Seymour, Henry Norris. A thick miasma of fear hung over all. If Henry died with only Lady Mary, two-year-old Princess Elizabeth, and a new infant princess as issue, what would happen to all of them, Seymours and Boleyns alike? Or—what would happen if the child Anne carried was a prince, and England was ruled by a regent that would be . . . who?

Anne.

I ran through the palace to the queen’s privy chamber. She had already heard of Henry’s fall; her needle and those of her ladies hung suspended in motionless fingers as they waited for more news. Lady Lee put one hand on Anne’s arm. The queen shook it free.

Anne’s eyes met mine with a silent message: Do what you can.

I gave a tiny shake of my head: I cannot. Not even a thrice-braided Sister possesses power over death.

But the king was not dead. It was Anne’s brother, of course, who eventually strode into the room. “The king lives! He breathes normally and sits up!”

Anne closed her eyes in thanksgiving. Lady Lee’s lips moved in prayer. Mistress Zouche wept openly.

Emma Colmer, motionless on a stool against the wall, finally moved, pouring the queen a glass of wine. The queen took it and drank, her hand now shaking so badly that drops of red blotted the tiny white cap she had been stitching for her new baby.

The king recovered, but he would never joust again. The sore from an old leg wound reopened and would not close. The physicians tried all they knew, but the most they could do was clean the oozing wound, which stank of decay, and change the dressing. They gave him potions for the pain, but he knocked the cups aside, declaring angrily that they put him to sleep only for him to wake in worse pain.

“I can spell him some relief,” I told the queen, and I did so whenever I was with them both, but that was seldom. Henry sent others to inquire after Anne’s health, but he dined in his apartments with his gentlemen, or perhaps with Jane Seymour, her kin present to guard Jane’s precious reputation.

Less than a week after his injury, on the day Katherine of Aragon was buried at Peterborough, Emma and I and Nan Cobham were glad that the king did not come near. Anne miscarried for the third time.

It happened quickly. There was much blood, and even more tears. The babe was but four and a half months along, too soon to draw a single breath. A tiny, still creature that fit in my hand, it possessed limbs, fingers, toes, an outsize bald head. It was a boy.

Nan Cobham baptized the child, as midwives were allowed to do when time was of the essence. I thought it a futile ritual; this poor half-made thing had never had any time. Then Mistress Cobham, Emma, and I stood silent around the bed. Anne, the only one whose cheeks were dry, lay with her eyes closed. When she opened them, gone were the cries of pain and protest, gone any trace of sorrow. Her gaze was pure iron.

“Clean me and the room. My ladies will be without; bring them in when I am ready, and send for my physician. He must witness . . . this, to report to the king.”

We scurried around like ants in a hill set afire. When the door was opened to Anne’s ladies in the privy chamber, Anne lay in bed. The sight of blood had vanished, the smell of it blown out by winter air from the window, the soiled bedclothes bundled in a corner. Nan Cobham held the wrapped, pathetic bundle of the dead prince.

“I have miscarried of my child,” Anne said to her ladies-in-waiting. “No . . . stop that noise. I shall conceive again soon, and since Katherine is now dead, there can be no noxious question of my son’s legitimacy.”

She was magnificent, and terrifying.

But after the physician and the necessary officials had come and gone, after the news had blasted through the court, after Nan had borne away the small wrapped bundle, the king stumped into the chamber on the arm of Edward Seymour.

“I am told you have lost me my boy.”

“The next one will be a prince,” Anne said.

“The next one! What of the three already lost? God will not give me male children. You are cursed, Anne, and I along with you!”

She sat up in bed. Skulking behind Emma, I saw that Anne could no longer restrain herself. She said coldly, “And you believe that no fault lies with you? Your unkindness to me, your sporting with strumpets, all caused so much distress that the babe could not stay in my womb! Do you think yourself innocent, Henry? As you always do?”

Deadly silence. No one except king and queen dared glance at anyone else, and the two monarchs stared at each other with implacable rage.

Then Anne remembered herself. She cried, “Because the love I bear you is so great, my heart broke when I saw that you loved others! Henry!”

He turned away. “You shall get no more boys by me,” he flung over his shoulder and, leaning on Jane Seymour’s brother, hobbled from the chamber.

Emma Colmer threw me a look and I scurried out, leaving the queen to attendants who could do nothing to help her.