Chapter Twenty-Eight Dead Men’s Shoes
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dead Men’s Shoes
Anne knew better than to follow the Green Man, who’d been able to move confidently past Whitehall’s guards, either because he was dressed as an entertainer or because he didn’t actually exist. A common woman, as she appeared to be, would not be allowed to pass.
Anne and Henry had worked extensively to redesign Whitehall when they’d taken it from Cardinal Wolsey after he’d failed to get Henry his annulment and fallen from favor.
She knew the palace’s layout well, and remembered that there was a servants’ entrance on the building’s north side, near the great hall.
She suspected she could enter there, unnoticed.
She crept around to the side of the palace, staying close to the stone wall that enclosed the grounds, and found the simple, unguarded wrought iron gate.
Through it, she spied a laundress, dressed in a red kirtle, with a white smock and bonnet, hanging the king’s linens to dry in the sun.
When the laundress returned to the servants’ quarters through a modest wooden door, Anne removed the cloak and gown she’d borrowed from Alice.
It was a relief to have them off, to remove a layer of clothing, to let her hot body cool.
How was she generating so much heat? She held the practical gray garments to her face and breathed in.
Underneath the smell of her own sweat and the smell of pond water, she could still smell Alice—a sweetness and faint hint of water lilies.
She steeled herself, balled up the garments, and shoved them under a rosemary bush growing near the palace wall. She wouldn’t need them again.
Dressed now in her red kirtle, Anne walked through the servants’ gate.
Among the king’s linens hanging to dry, his undergarments and bed linens, and also the linen bandages for his unhealing leg wound, Anne found a number of aprons and bonnets intended for use by the servants.
She tied an apron tightly around her waist and replaced the cap Alice had given her with a bonnet.
There, she thought, I’ll look enough like any other scullery maid, cook, laundress, or chambermaid in the building.
The only thing conspicuous about her appearance was the silk collar covering her scar.
Carefully, so as not to tear the fabric, Anne pulled the three threads she’d knotted at the pond so that the threads broke, then held the swaddling cloth to her nose.
The faintest hint of lavender, the faintest hint of Elizabeth’s baby smell—was she imagining it?
—still clung there. She put the fabric back where she’d kept it at her execution, inside her bodice, against her breast, beside her heart, this keepsake, this treasured remnant and reminder of her Elizabeth.
From the laundry line, she grabbed a white linen kerchief and tied it around her neck.
Still a bit peculiar, but better. From here, she could enter the palace through the door the laundress had just passed through.
For all the time Anne had spent at Whitehall, a frequent residence in the courtly rotation of palaces, she’d never been in the servants’ quarters.
She’d sent all her needs through her ladies-in-waiting, maids of honor, or lady’s maids.
Presumably, they communicated with the many servants required to run a palace, and Anne had never had need to set foot downstairs.
Anne entered through the kitchen. It was hot and noisy.
Several cooks flitted about large wooden tables chopping and preparing ingredients, then carrying them over to big iron kettles simmering over the fires of the two massive hearths.
A woman banging and kneading dough at one of the tables eyed Anne suspiciously.
She bowed her head and hurried out of the kitchen into a corridor lined with many rooms. In one, a few servants were eating a meal, chatting and laughing; many of the others were furnished with two or three beds apiece and must be sleeping quarters.
She turned into one of the bedchambers and closed the door behind her, breathing deeply and hoping the woman from the kitchen would not follow.
She needed to get upstairs and make her way to the opposite end of the palace.
There stood the queen’s chambers—she imagined Jane Seymour in them now, attended by her ladies, perhaps choosing a gown for her wedding—and, more to her purpose, the king’s chambers.
That was where she’d find Henry. She knew that there was only one set of stairs connecting the servants’ quarters to the main floor of the palace, and that opened into a recessed alcove outside the great hall.
That would be her first task: getting up the stairs.
Cautiously, Anne opened the chamber door and scanned the corridor for anybody who might see her.
Finding it empty, she dashed to the staircase.
With her head down, she raced up the stairs.
If anybody saw her, they’d think her just another servant.
If she moved quickly and stayed in the shadows, nobody would pay her much attention.
Anne knew she’d never really noticed the servants inhabiting the corners of every room she’d been in.
They were there, but they weren’t really there.
She would rely on that invisibility now as protection.
At the top of the stairs, Anne ducked behind a floor-length drape, pulled to the side to allow light in from a large window, so that she was completely hidden in the thick fabric’s folds.
On the wall beside the drape hung a large tapestry, woven with a picture of a naked Eve biting the apple, the snake wrapped erotically around her extended calf, a reminder to all who saw it of the frailty and deception of women.
From her hiding spot, Anne could hear voices in the great hall.
More specifically, she could hear Henry’s voice, giving commands.
The man had such a booming voice, no awareness of how loudly he spoke, no inclination, ever, to lower it.
“I want grouse as the main course because the Lady Jane adores it. She’ll have what she wants,” he proclaimed.
A second voice, quieter and harder to discern, mumbled in ascent; must be Cromwell.
“Make sure all signs of the other one are stricken from this hall,” Henry continued.
More muted replies. Then Henry said, “Three days’ time.
You’d better be up to the task, Cromwell.
” He must be giving instructions about the wedding, Anne thought.
Three days—there was time then, before he wedded Jane, time for her to do what needed to be done.
Anne’s heart beat faster at the sound of Henry’s voice.
In her first days of imprisonment at the Tower, she’d longed to hear his voice again.
She’d imagined him mounting the Tower steps to the royal apartments, throwing the door open, taking her in his arms, confessing that this had all been a terrible mistake.
Hearing Henry’s voice would have meant she’d have the opportunity to explain herself, to straighten the whole misunderstanding out, as she’d tried to do the night before the May Day joust. They’d been at Greenwich Palace, east of the city, and Henry had confronted her about the rumors that she’d spoken of his death to Henry Norris.
“What did you say to him?” Henry demanded, his eyes pained. “The courtiers say you said he looks for dead men’s shoes, and seeks to have you. Woman, have you been unfaithful to me?”
“No,” Anne pleaded. “No. Listen, I beg of you. I have never been unfaithful. I have been with no man but you. ’Twas merely a playful flirtation. I was teasing him about delaying his marriage proposal to my cousin, nudging him to the altar by pointing out how ludicrously he was behaving.”
“Do you believe he wants to bed you?” Henry was shouting, his face cracked with anger.
“No, my love, mon cher, no.” Anne placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him. “He has simply taken courtly affections too far. What am I to do, as queen? I am expected to play along with such flirtations. I am trying to uphold the customs of the court.”
“I don’t believe you,” Henry had snapped back. “I don’t believe you ever loved me.”
“Please,” Anne had begged, bouncing a fussing Elizabeth gently in her other arm, for she’d had the child brought from Hatfield to present to her father.
“Please. Believe me. I would never. You are obsessed with having a male heir, my love. It consumes you. It clouds your judgment.” Anne thrust Elizabeth toward him.
“See,” she’d pleaded, “here is your heir! Here is your prince! She is as good as any prince—she is better.”
But the king had turned away, refused to look, refused to hold his own child. He’d retreated to his chambers, seething, and when the door had closed, she heard him punch the wall and yowl in pain. Elizabeth, in her arms, went red and wailed.