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My life for to prolong

Alone in prison strange!

I wail my destiny;

Woe worth this cruel hap, that I

Should taste this misery.

Farewell my pleasures past,

Welcome my present pain

I feel my torments so increase

That life cannot remain.

Sound now the passing bell,

Rung is my doleful knell,

For its sound my death doth tell,

Death doth draw nigh

Sound the knell dolefully,

For now I die!

Defiled is my name, full sore

Through cruel spite and false reportl,

For wrongfully he judge of me;

Unto my fame a mortal wound,

Say what ye list, it may not be,

You seek for that shall not be found.

Besides her praying and composing her ballad, she had one other bit of earthly business to attend to. She asked one of her women attendants to seek Mary’s forgiveness for the wrongs she, Anne, had done her and for the severity with which she had treated her, for, until that was accomplished, her conscience could not be quiet. The woman promised to do this in Anne’s name.

Dawn came before five, and Master Kingston was already exhausted from the tasks of the day ahead. As host for the execution of a Queen, he naturally had many details of both practicality and protocol to attend to. The witnessing dignitaries must be properly received and grouped about the scaffold according to rank; the twenty pounds in gold alms, provided by the King, to be distributed by Anne before her death, must be got up in little velvet bags; black drapery must be hung about the scaffold; and all chronicles mentioning the execution of a King or Queen must be consulted for the last time, in hopes of finding some overlooked detail that would provide the proper embellishment for the hideous occasion.

In addition, there was the matter of meeting the French headsman and giving him instructions; having the grave already dug and waiting; and procuring a coffin. Kingston was all in a dither, as he had received no instructions from King Henry about either the grave or the coffin, and yet the Queen’s body would have to be disposed of somehow.

He was running late. And then came the welcome news: the King had postponed the hour of the execution from nine o’clock until noon. But still no word about the coffin!

Kingston sought out Anne to tell her of the delay. She was disappointed. “I had thought by noon to be past my pain,” she said sadly. Rushing toward her gaoler, she whispered, “I am innocent!” She grabbed Kingston’s arm, gripping it painfully. “I am innocent!” Then, in one of her characteristic mood shifts, she suddenly cried, “Is it painful?”

“No,” said the Constable. “It is over too quickly. There should be no pain, it is so subtle.”

She circled her neck with her hands. “I have a little neck,” she said. “But the axe is so thick, and rough.”

“Have you not heard? The King seeks to spare you that. He has sent to France for a swordsman to perform the duty.”

“Ah!” She smiled, a little sliver of a smile. “He was ever a good and gentle sovereign lord to me.” She began to laugh, that hideous, raucous laughter which cut itself off as abruptly as it began. “Will you carry a message to His Majesty on my behalf?”

Kingston nodded.

“Tell him he has ever been constant in his career of advancing me: from a private gentlewoman he made me a Marquess, from a Marquess a Queen, and now he hath left no higher degree of honour, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.” She gestured sweetly. “Will you tell my Lord that?”

“Never have I seen one to be executed who has such joy and pleasure in death,” he said, to himself rather than to her, him.

“Master Kingston! Master Kingston! The people will have no difficulty finding a nickname for me. I shall be la Reine Anne sans tête ... Queen Anne Lack-Head!”

Frightened, he slammed the thick oak door on her shrieking laughter, but it carried right through the wood.

All this I heard later from the Constable himself. As for the actual execution, I witnessed it in the King’s stead. As the hour approached, Henry dressed himself all in white. I dared not ask him why, but there was a dreadful deliberateness in his choice