The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [159]
“Your Majesty, you are angry at me,” he said.
I did not reply.
“Pray tell me my offence, so that I may amend it.”
“The handkerchief ...” I began. “Was it necessary to mock me so? Or was that her doing?”
“As God is my witness, I do not understand.”
“Stop the pretence!” I hissed. “You are the Queen’s lover. I know the truth, and you shall die for it.”
“It is not true!” His voice rose in terror. “It is not true! Never have I betrayed you with the Queen, in thought or deed!”
“Come, Norris. She has betrayed us all; you are not alone.” He, too, was a victim. “Confess the truth, and you shall go free.” Suddenly I meant it. How could I punish him for a fault I shared with him?
“Confess the truth!” I repeated. “Let someone, at last, speak truth to my face!”
The whole truth was a different creature from the half-truth. I wanted him not to deny the accusation, for I knew the physical facts were true, but to somehow redeem it, to acknowledge the bald facts but to give them some interpretation I could live with h wa>
They came into her presence boldly, not deferentially.
“You have committed adultery,” the Duke accused her, “with five known men. These men are already imprisoned and have confessed. You, too, must confess. There is no more need to hide and lie. All is known.” He also accused her of incest and intent to murder her husband.
Anne angrily denied it. “I am clean from the touch of any man but my true wedded husband, the King!” she screeched.
Her uncle shook his head sadly at her stubborn lie. Already the State Barge, which would convey her to the Tower, was waiting by the water-steps of the palace, manned by Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, and four enemy women spies chosen by Cromwell to report every word Anne uttered henceforth.
“Tut, tut, tut,” murmured the Duke, shaking his head like the clapper of a bell.
That afternoon Anne was rowed to the Tower, while the bright spring sunlight glanced off the Thames and common folk waved excitedly at the State Barge.
When she was received at the entrance, she fell to her knees. “God help me!” she cried. “I am not guilty of the accusation!”
Then Kingston and his men took her away—to the selfsame rooms she had lain in the night before her Coronation. There she would stay, alone, with no kind person nearby. Where there had been flatterers and singers that other May night three years ago, now there was silence and mystery.
“Where is my sweet brother?” she cried.
“I left him at York Place,” Kingston answered. The truth was that George Boleyn had been taken to the Tower that very morning.
“I hear say that I shall be accused with five men; and I can say no more but nay without I should open my body,” she cried, flinging open her skirt hysterically. No one understood her words.
“O Norris, hast thou accused me?” she asked the air. “Thou art in the Tower together, and thou and I will die together; and Mark, thou art here too.”
When the King heard how she called upon her brother, Norris, and Smeaton, he wept.
Cromwell knew the Queen well. He knew that she was “as brave as a lion,” as someone had once described her, but that even a lion needs an adversary. Without an adversary, without a clear-cut accuser, she would nervously babble and betray herself. He directed every word she spoke to be recorded. Anne Boleyn had never known how to keep silent. Cromwell, who had heard the “I have a longing to eat apples” speech, knew well how to exploit her fatal weakness.
The very first day he reaped a bountiful harvest. She recalled her conversation with Weston in which he had professed his love. She compared him with Norris. “I more fear Weston,” she said, and explained why.
The next day she came to her brother. Her spies had told her that he had been arrested.
“I am very glad that we both be so nigh together,” she said.
Kingston confirmed that five men had been arrested and now lay in the Tower because of her.