Page 82 of The Queen’s Witch

In London, treachery travels by water.

I lodged in a mean inn at the city’s edge, but by first light returned to the Thames. A small crowd had already gathered along the riverbanks. The tide was in and the river at the full, small waves slapping against stone or earth. Yesterday, gossip said, Mark was taken to Thomas Cromwell’s house in Stepney and remained there overnight. If he was indeed charged as rumored, he would be taken to the Tower.

At dawn, a barge rowed past, carrying soldiers and Mark Smeaton. He slumped on a bench, head bent, wrists manacled. He did not look up. The barge glided on and turned into the Traitors’ Gate of the Tower.

I had caused this. My amatory magick had sent Mark into the arms of the queen.

No, Anne had caused this. She had used Mark to obtain a prince, the prince she did not believe Henry could give her.

No, Cromwell had caused this; whatever transpired at Winchester, Henry had been ignorant. You shall get no more boys by me, he had hurled at Anne, proof that he believed the miscarried child had been his. Cromwell, with his questioning and probing and twisting events to suit Henry’s desires, had somehow convinced the king that Anne had betrayed him.

No. It was Henry who had caused this. He wanted to put Anne aside, and he would halt at nothing to achieve that goal. Mark was Henry’s hammer to smash Anne.

Whoever had caused Mark’s downfall, I had assisted.

I did not, somehow could not, leave the river. All day I lingered as the tides ebbed and flowed. I left only to walk to the palace gates, trying to glean any fresh news from those gathered there. There was none. I learned nothing until dark, when, back at my dingy lodgings, I heard there had indeed been a tournament at the Greenwich tiltyard. Before the jousting ended, the king had risen abruptly and ridden off with Sir Henry Norris. The queen had presided alone over the rest of the May Day celebrations.

May Day.

Beltane.

I had forgotten.

I had little rest that night. But in my brief sleep, I dreamed of Grandmother, although for once not of her torture. She took the same faint, wavery form as the two times I had glimpsed her beside the Dark One. She said nothing but gazed at me with such sorrow and reproach that I woke gasping.

It was but a dream. It was but a dream. It was but a dream.

By dawn, I was again beside the Thames, arriving just as a barge glided past. It carried Henry Norris, the king’s closest friend since boyhood, to the Tower.

Later, it was George Boleyn.

Later still, William Brereton and Sir Francis Weston.

By late afternoon, great crowds lined both sides of the river, watching, mostly silent. Like me, even without benefit of magick, the people of London knew what was coming.

Her barge rowed up to the Tower well before sunset. Anne sat with Lady Lee and another woman whose back was to me so that I could not see her face. Emma Colmer? Anne, richly dressed as always, sat with her head high and lips pressed tightly together.

“She will burn for her sins,” a woman beside me said, not without satisfaction. No one answered her.

The barge moored not at the Traitor’s Gate that had swallowed Mark, but at the Court Gate. The Tower constable awaited his captive. Anne needed help climbing from the barge. Then she disappeared into the Tower, where I dared not risk, even with magick, following her.

Nor was there any point. No magick could help her now.

London was aflame with rumor, broadsheets, speculation, whispers from palace servants. Anne was manacled in a dungeon. No, she had been spirited away to France. The king wished only to terrify her into retiring to a convent. No, Jane Seymour had persuaded the king to burn Anne at the stake. Anne was a witch and had poisoned Queen Katherine. Henry Norris would fight the king as Anne’s champion, a fight to the death. Jane was pregnant. Anne was pregnant. Mark Smeaton had fathered Princess Elizabeth. Anne had been charged with adultery with five men, including her brother.

Only the last rumor proved true.

But it was bedding Mark Smeaton that most captured London’s speculation, disdain, fascination. The queen and a low-born musician!

“She would not. Too proud.”

“I count nothing beneath her.”

“I saw him once, I did. He be handsome.”

“Hush yer stupid mouth, Jenny! Yer nothing but a harlot yerself!”

Would the queen, they all wondered, bed with someone so low born? Or with her own brother? How? When? Why?