Chapter Thirty-Two Scream and I’ll Kill You
Chapter Thirty-Two
Scream and I’ll Kill You
Incredible, Anne thought as she stood over Henry, sword drawn.
Incredible that he does not hear me, does not sense me standing here beside his kneeling form, so enraptured in his own prayers that he is dead to the world.
What prayers was he saying? He spoke in such a whispered tone that his words were a murmur, indecipherable.
Maybe he was reciting common prayers, Pater Nosters or Ave Marias.
His Latin had always been impeccable. Anne had loved listening to the confident, evenly paced cadence of it, like a steady drum.
Maybe he was praying in English, private prayers for something more specific.
Perhaps for the health of his new bride, Jane, asleep in her chambers.
Perhaps he was praying for a son, the true heir he hoped Jane would deliver to him.
Perhaps he was praying for enough virility to put an heir in Jane, for he was forty-four, his belly had grown soft and round, the hair at the crown of his head, Anne could see as she stood above him, was thinning, and certainly his occasional problems with impotence would only get worse.
Perhaps he was praying for his foul-smelling leg wound to heal, for its stench was so great that it gagged Anne.
Perhaps for a full return to his youth. Perhaps for his brother, Arthur, to never have died, to walk through the door of the privy chapel, velvet robes flowing, place a hand on Henry’s shoulder, and say, “Enough, brother, you can be done now. I am here.”
Incredible that he cannot hear me, has not sensed me, Anne thought.
Remembering the silence of her own executioner, she stepped out of her dirty slippers.
The stone floor beneath her stocking feet was cool and soothing.
Henry continued with his prayers. She could strike him now, she realized.
She could lower the sword the countryside had given her and be done.
She gathered her strength, gripped the sword firmly with both hands, but something in her froze.
And in that moment of indecision, Henry turned his head and looked at her.
His face, now jowly, with faint lines around his eyes and mouth.
Anne had known this face since Henry was barely twenty.
She had watched its youthful luster sharpen, then fade.
For a moment, Henry stared at her, silent. When he found his words, he uttered, “Anne?” And if she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought that she saw a flash of relief spread over his face, that he was glad to see her. He moved one foot forward, as though to rise from his kneeling position.
“No,” Anne said. “Stay where you are.” She held the sword aloft above her head. “Stay where you are, or I’ll finish this now.”
Henry’s eyes traveled to the sword. He was a smart man, calculating. He moved his leg back.
“Anne,” he said. “How?”
Anne lowered the sword to her side. With one hand, she undid the kerchief at her neck, revealing the thick and jagged scar. Henry looked away, repulsed.
“No,” she said. She reached down and cupped his chin, turned his head to face her. “Look. Look at what you’ve done. At what you’ve had done for you.”
“Anne,” he began, his voice sorrowful, “please. Listen.” Did this man, who had spent the night of her execution drinking and dancing with his mistress and the half of his groomsmen that he hadn’t also executed, feel remorse, regret?
“No,” Anne said. Then, “What?”
“Anne,” Henry repeated, this time in a plaintive whisper.
“What?” she replied, her voice low. “What?”
“Anne. My Anna.”
“I am not your Anna.” In the corridor outside the chapel she could hear footsteps. Henry turned his head toward the door. “Scream and I’ll kill you before they can open the door.”
Henry looked at her, panicked, assessing. He shut his mouth. The footsteps receded back down the corridor, into the king’s chambers.
“What,” Anne said again, “could you possibly have to say to me?”
“I want to tell you—” he began, but Anne interrupted him.
“How could you?” she asked. “How could you make up such stories about me? How could you bring such shame to my name?”
Henry opened and closed his mouth, soundlessly.
“You know that I was never untrue,” Anne continued.
“You know that I knew no other man than you, that I was a virgin when we wed—which of course is more than I could say about you—you, who fucked every courtier’s wife who’d raise her skirts for you, who fucked my own sister.
I was a virgin. I knew only you. I loved only you.
Only you. You. What could you possibly, possibly, have to say? ”
Henry stared at her, his mouth firmly set, his expression hardening. “You do not understand,” he spoke. “You do not understand what it is to be king, to want, no, to need, an heir.”
“You had an heir! You had Elizabeth!” Anne’s voice was a shout, but also a whisper.
“No,” he replied, and his voice had a cold edge. “To need a son. To need a real heir. A woman cannot sit on the throne of England and govern in her own right. The people would not follow her.”
“They would!” Anne exclaimed. “They would follow Elizabeth!”
Henry scoffed, narrowing his eyes. “They wouldn’t.”
Anne brought her other hand to the hilt of her sword, grasped it, and began to raise it.
She didn’t want to hear any more of what Henry had to say.
Now was the time. Henry put a hand out to stop the sword from rising, perhaps to try to grasp its blade and pull it from her.
She yanked the sword quickly, and it sliced his palm.
He recoiled and looked down at the cut, as though he couldn’t believe that his kingly body was capable of injury at her hands, as though he couldn’t believe that she’d actually hurt him.
Blood dripped off his hand onto the stone floor.
“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” she said, a hint of a smile on her lips. “Imagine if that was your whole head.”
Henry moved toward her, his cut hand held forward. Like Christ’s wound, Anne thought.
“Try that again and I’ll cut more than your hand.” She thrust the sword toward him, threateningly.
He moved back. “Anne,” he began again. He was silent for a moment, looking down and to the side in an expression Anne knew meant he was deep in thought.
“Anne,” he said, more confidently. He met her gaze.
“Whatever has done this, whatever magic has brought you back to life, ’tis a miracle.
Drop your sword. You and I shall be reunited.
We shall leave this chapel together, our union reanointed by my blood.
We shall cover this deformity on your neck with fine collars, so no one shall see it.
We shall tell the people that ’twas not you who was executed, but a look-alike.
’Twas not you who stood trial, but a look-alike.
” Here he stopped, as though searching for words.
“We can say you were kidnapped, held for ransom, an impostor sent in your place, so canny she fooled even me, but devious. That—that—” He paused again.
“That the impostor’s true nature shone in her whorish ways, in the way she bedded a hundred men at court.
That upon her execution, your captors released you, their plan foiled, and you returned to me, my true queen. ”
My true queen. Anne thought of the many times Henry had called her that, whispered it in her ear.
After they exchanged secret vows in Dover, at their witnessed wedding in the royal chapel of this very palace, after her coronation, when Elizabeth was born, at hundreds of small moments in between, at breakfasts and dinners, at parties and out hunting, at cards, in his council room, when she spoke over his advisors with a better plan, a better solution to whatever problem lay before him.
My true queen. Anne marveled at how quickly he’d spun this alternate history, this lie to explain her absence, this ploy to save himself.
“You can sit by my side,” he continued. “We can rule together. If you cannot bear another child, we shall raise Elizabeth to be my heir. She shall rule after me. She shall be my successor.”
Anne looked at him, incredulously. He was so charming. Charmant, as Queen Claude used to say when Francois would visit her two or three months after she’d given birth, to impregnate her again, then leave to be with his mistresses. Très, très charmant, Claude would say sarcastically.
Anne didn’t want to think about their happy times.
She didn’t want to think about their passionate courtship, about their wedding, about her coronation, about Henry holding Elizabeth lovingly in his arms as she called him Papa and tugged at his beard, laughing.
She thought instead of the heartless look he gave her when she’d lost their son in January, of the words he’d uttered, “I see God will not give me male children.” She thought of him gleefully following the mistress she arranged for him while pregnant to his bedchamber while she lay swollen and uncomfortable in bed, of the pleasure he took with this mistress in his bed.
She thought of walking in on him in his chambers, with Jane on his lap, the bodice of her dress half undone, his mouth on her breast, of how angry he’d looked when she shouted and threw the book she’d been carrying at him—how angry he’d looked at her for daring to be angry, for daring to show her anger.
She thought of how he’d double-crossed Katherine.
How he’d sworn to be her husband, then, enticed by Anne, a younger woman, and aware that Katherine was at the end of her childbearing years, abandoned her.
She thought of how he’d double-crossed Wolsey, his beloved advisor, who, once he could no longer do what Henry wanted, could not magic forth a papal annulment, had been arrested on Henry’s command and mistreated so gravely that the old man had died of illness.
She thought of how he’d had Thomas More executed, his friend and high chancellor, when More refused to betray his faith and acknowledge the king as head of the English churches.
Anne didn’t agree with Katherine, or Wolsey, or More.
She hadn’t liked any of them. She’d been relieved at their deaths.
But she saw in Henry’s treatment of them a pattern, of using and discarding people, of turning quickly to whoever stood before him offering the most, and quickly away from those who had outlived their usefulness.
She thought of how he’d double-crossed her, how he’d pretended to believe the lies about her infidelities, how he’d ordered her trial, ordered her execution.
How he’d spent the night of her death in his mistress’s arms, swilling wine and celebrating with his cronies, who, she knew, truly believed they’d be his cronies forever, who didn’t realize that they, too, were part of a movable cast of characters and would soon, like sins in a morality play, be cast out.
She thought of Henry lifting her up off the dance floor at Queen Claude’s banquet at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, all those years ago, spinning her around, of how her heart had lit afire with his gaze, and of how he’d set her down and walked away to tease and fuck her sister.
She thought of waking up, all those years ago, when she was twelve, in Henry’s arms, as he carried her to bed at the archduchess’s house, of how, when he’d looked down at her, when he’d laid her in bed and kissed her good night, she noticed, just for a moment, a look of lust, although she was a child.
And she thought of Elizabeth. Elizabeth.
Henry’s own daughter, whom he’d made an orphan.
Motherless, because he’d killed her mother.
Fatherless, because he’d bullied Cranmer into annulling their marriage, making Elizabeth a bastard.
She saw, in all these stories of betrayal and heartbreak, that the common thread was Henry, that he would never change, that he would go forth in life destroying one thing after another, using up one person after another, taking and taking like a hungry animal, never satisfied, never still.
“Anne,” said Henry, his hands up, pleading.
She raised the sword above her head.
“Anne,” he begged, regretfully, like a child who’d been caught misbehaving.
She gripped the hilt firmly, felt the polished topaz inlaid there smooth beneath her hands.
“Anne, no.”
He looked from left to right, panicked, fear wild on his face.
“Anne, you don’t have to do this.”
Be bold, she thought. She swung the sword around and down.
“Anne—” he spoke.
The sword sliced through his neck smoothly, in one swift blow, and his head fell to the floor, eyes open, shocked. His body collapsed, his neck issuing forth a torrent of blood that first gushed, then quickly dwindled to weaker and weaker bursts, until it only trickled.
The blood spread across the stone floor, reaching Anne’s toes. It was warm and wet.
And then, he spoke no more.