The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [230]
She said, clearly, so that all might hear: “I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper. God have mercy on my soul. Good people, I beg you, pray for me.”
Then she put her head on the block—expertly—and the axe severed it. It rolled but a little way in the hay. Functionaries gathered it up, and spread a black cloth over the body trunk, still kneeling in the black dress beside the block. Blood was gushing from the severed neck, but the cold air quickly congealed it. They lifted her body away, but did not put it in the coffin yet. Let the blood drain out first, else it would foul the coffin.
Two pages scrubbed off the block, to cleanse it of Catherine’s mess. The space beside it was rinsed with steaming water from pitchers. I was told that the smell of the water mingling with blood made many bystanders ill.
Then Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, was pulled toward the scrubbed-up block. She was allowed to speak, in accordance with custom.
“Good Christians,” she said, “God has permitted me to suffer this shameful doom, as a punishment for having contributed to my husband’s death. I falsely accused him of loving in incestuous manner his sister, Queen Anne Boleyn. For this I deserve to die. But I am guilty of no other crime.” Seeing Catherine’s black-covered lump, she began to scream. Then, shaking, she laid her head and submitted to the axe.
After all the blood had run out of her, they put Catherine in the coffin, and buried it in the Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula within the Tower, only a few feet from her cousin Anne Boleyn.
And it was done. Her corpse lay in a box, neatly covered over.
Mercifully I did not hear their scaffold statements until nightfall, when the children had gone. Then I heard them. Then I lay in bed (not warm, merely pretending to be) and heard them.
I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper.
She had said that. She had actually said that. Was it true? I hurried past that, which was beyond understanding, since her bloodless form now lay buried. I could never ask her, could never wring from her an explanation: Why did you in"3">“No! No!”
The wood registered the vibrations. Only a few inches between us—
I flung open the chamber door, opening on the darkened Privy Chamber.
“No! No!”
The voice was behind yet another set of doors. I opened the Privy Chamber doors, leading to the Audience Chamber, but it was empty, vast, alien.
“Henry!”
It came from the gallery, the Long Gallery connecting the royal apartments with the Chapel Royal.
I fumbled at the door latch. It was carved and heavy, to impress petitioners with the gravity of majesty. The doors themselves were great panels, the height of three men. Pulling them open required considerable strength; I felt my belly muscles tighten at the strain.
The passageway outside was deserted. Then I saw it ... the white figure, being dragged backwards, receding before my eyes. Mournful cries came from it, sorrow beyond telling....
There was nothing there. It had quite vanished, and all its presence with it.
I returned to my bed. Since Culpepper, I had had no intimate of the bedchamber, and I slept quite alone and unattended. In one sense I savoured it. It was tiresome always to consider another’s needs in the night, not to dare to light a candle for fear of waking him.
The ghost—for ghost it was, and I might as well name it as such—shrieked and cried in a way no mortal ever had. Would others see it? Or was it meant only for me? I settled the covers about me. I would not sleep, that I knew. But I expected to pass the night in solitary meditation.
It was in the very darkest part of night, when the sun is gone and thinks never to return, that I first saw the monks. They were standing in the shadows of the far reaches of the chamber. I could see straightway that their habits were varied,