The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [163]
But there was one thing I would have of her, one thing that only she could give: information, a confession that our marriage had been false all along. I would send Cranmer to her, to receive her confession, holding out the promise to spare her the flames if she only admitted it, admitted that she had brought this marriage about by witchcraft, and now abjured it. For I would be freed of her before her death. She would not breathe her last as my wife. I would not be linked to her!
“Go to her,” I commissioned Cranmer, “to her suite in the Tower, and extract an oath from her regarding this matter.” I noted the questioning look on his face. “Yes, she still keeps state, under my express command. She has her royal quarters, her jewels and gowns.” I remembered More in his bookless cell. “They were what she sold her soul for, were they not? Let her enjoy them to the end.”
She would keep everything to the end (except her title as my wife), and suddenly I envisioned the fitting way for her to depart this life. I would send for a French swordsman, and he would perform the execution deftly and with style. She had always loved the “French way”; doubtless a good English axe would be too crude for her sensibilities. I wrote out the order for the Lieutenant of Calais. What a surprise I was giving her, right up to the last....
I began to laugh—first a little, then hysterically.
WILL:
We heard the screams of laughter coming from the King’s private chamber, but dared not enter. It sounded as if a madman were within, and we feared that somehow an intruder had gained entrance. The laughter was not recognizable as the King’s; that was the reason why at length a guard opened the door and checked inside.
There was no one there but King Henry, seated before his writing desk, and red in the face, looking apoplectic.
I approached him—I was the only one who dared—and stood ready to summon the physician. He had suffered a seizure, I was sure.
“Now, good my Lord, help is coming,” I said, in what I meant to be my most reassuring tone.
“Help?” he said, in a quiet voice. The red was draining from his face. “Nay, there’s no help for it. ‘Tis done, ’tis done.” He indicated a letter, ready to be sent. “A pretty French death,” he said. “One’s death should be consistent with one’s life, should it not? Only we seldom can arrange it. Well, I shall oblige.”
Had the strain, tarted to rise, then shook his head. “One thing more. I must give them an easy death as well. Commute the sentence to a simple beheading. There, that’ll do.” He began scribbling orders on parchment. “But they must content themselves with a local headsman and a regular axe.
On the morning of May seventeenth, with Anne watching from her window, her five lovers and co-conspirators were marched out to the hill beyond the Tower moat, there to mount the scaffold. It was a fine high one, so that all the onlookers (and the crowd was vast) could have a clear view.
Sir William Brereton was the first to stand upon the platform. He whined like a coward and shook bodily.
“I have deserved to die, if it were a thousand deaths,” he cried. Then, at the motioning of the headsman to lay his head upon the block, he protested, “But the cause whereof I judge not—but if you judge, judge the best.” Seeking further delay, he repeated himself three or four more times.
But at length his voice failed, and he was forced to put his head down. The headsman raised his great axe and chopped clean through Brereton’s neck. The head rolled in the straw, and the headsman held it up, as was customary.
It took some few minutes to remove the body and head, lay fresh straw, and wipe clean the block and axe. The dead man was taken down by steps on the opposite side of the scaffold.
Next came Henry Norris. He said little, but