Chapter 1
May 15, 1536
It was a windy, yet sunny day as Anne was called from the Tower to stand before the jury of noblemen. She had heard the charges and the rumors, but far more haunting, she had seen the look of cold indifference on the face of her husband, the King as she pleaded her innocence. Anne shuddered as she recalled the moment.
‘Henry!’ she cried. ‘Please Henry you must listen to me!’
The king’s steps never faltered. Anne stumbled and fell under the weight of two-year-old Elizabeth. With her mind racing, Anne stripped the toddler of her gown, a miniature of Anne’s own. Tearing the pins from her gleaming red curls, Anne shouted once more.
‘Look at your child!’
Henry stopped and after a few minutes turned.
‘She how perfect she is? She is a tiny version of you? Of me. Of our love for one another?’
Anne whispered desperately. Henry walked to them and removing his cape, draped it over Anne and the child to hide her nakedness. Taking her chin in one massive hand, he peered into the three-year-old’s intelligent blue eyes, boring deeply into his own. He noticed a streak of blood on the girl’s cheek where Anne wasn’t able to fully shield her as they fell. A few strands of hair stuck to it. Red on red. As red as the hair on his own head. He closed his eyes and steeled his resolve.
Opening them, he fixed his gaze on Anne and gravely stared her down.
‘You must be an enchantress and a harlot. I can have no more words for you. May God help you, for I will not.’
With that, he stormed away.
Clenching her hands in her lap, Anne bit her lip to stop the tears that threatened to spill over. She was innocent, yet a wicked lie had been concocted that she had been unfaithful to her husband with four men, one of whom was her own brother, George. Anne’s heart ached. She thought over her long courtship and her comparatively short marriage. Anne had been convinced to seduce the King of England by her father, Thomas Boleyn, the Earl of Norfolk. What neither of them had counted on was Anne falling in love with the charming king.
After seven years of waiting, they were secretly married, and Elizabeth was born shortly after. From there, was a downward spiral. Her heart ached further as she recalled the two pregnancies that followed; each promising joy and hope, only to break her heart when they ended in loss. She had never known that they also broke her marriage. Henry was on the quest for a healthy son, and now that he was convinced that he would never father a child by Anne, Henry began to despair. And as his despair deepened, his eye began to wander.
Anne’s old ally turned enemy, Thomas Cromwell, the King’s Principal Secretary, began to look for ways to rid himself and the King of her. They began as allies to turn Henry away from the considerably decadent and corrupt Catholic Church and reform the misled monasteries of England. After being accused of stealing from the poor and perhaps even the King by Anne, Cromwell feared that his new position, and perhaps even, his life would be forfeit if the Boleyns continued to have power. Rather than attack the Queen outright, Cromwell united with a new promising family, the Seymours, to poke at a festering wound in the King’s pride, his lack of male issue, the Queen’s miscarriages, and the fact that many in Europe still considered his current marriage invalid.
To distract him from his obvious love for his wife, the sister of Thomas and Edward Seymour, Jane, was placed in the path of the King. The ploy worked as Jane was almost the polar opposite of Anne. Where Anne was loud and flirtatious, cultured and argumentative, dark and regal, Jane was soft and meek, simple and submissive, blonde and homely. Henry was instantly taken with the lady-in-waiting, to the chagrin of the Queen. The affair was the indirect cause of Anne’s last miscarriage, as she walked in on Jane sitting on the King’s lap as the two shared a kiss. This so upset the Queen that her labor started early and the child, a tiny little boy, was born the next evening. He never even took a breath. This was the opening that Cromwell needed. Evidence was created, witnesses were bribed, and the King had an answer to his problem.
‘Anne, Queen of England!’
a voice shouted, startling Anne from her musings.
’You are commanded to come before the panel!'
Gently touching a finger to her lips and then to the prayer book that she kept at her waist, Anne straightened her back, lifted her chin, and calmly walked into the room. She looked every bit of the queen with her black damask gown peppered with diamonds and pearls over a crimson kirtle. Her raven tresses, normally left to swing free, had been curled and swept onto her head and there secured by pins of diamond and pearl. A black French hood studded with pearls kept the tendrils from falling into her face. Around her neck, she wore a walnut-sized diamond on a chain of gold, a gift from the king. As she entered, she noticed to her dismay and anger that no one stood in respect for her.
‘Does no one stand? I am your anointed queen and in my presence, no one sits.’,
she said bewildered, looking about the room at the nobles and common folk alike. Somewhat embarrassed, one by one the panel stood and doffed their hats. After being thus coldly acknowledged, they sat and began the trial. The jury consisted of her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, her former youthful love the Duke of Northumberland, Henry Percy, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, The Marquis of Exeter, The Earls of Oxford, Westmoreland, Worcester, Rutland, Huntingdon, and Sussex, and several other lords. Anne noticed, with bitterness, that all of these men except Henry Percy, who stood trembling and pale-faced, stood to gain from her conviction.
Undeterred, the leader of the panel, her uncle began the trial.
‘Queen Anne, you have been brought before us on charges of adultery, incest, conspiring to murder the king, and witchcraft. How do you answer these charges?’
Anne tossed her bejeweled head defiantly, and shouted,
‘I do not answer these charges as they are untrue and unbecoming of my station!’
The jury pressed on listing dates and times that she was seen with her supposed lovers. This proved to be a mistake as Anne rebutted each date. She was either pregnant, recovering from a miscarriage or birth, or with her ladies. The panel paused a moment to talk amongst themselves. Anne’s stomach clenched and she fought a wave of dizziness and nausea. Was she truly wanted dead so badly?
‘My good people’ she began, ‘I am come before you all painted a common adulteress and whore. I beseech you to attend to the details of this fraudulent trial!’
Norfolk began to shout for her to be silent and the ill feeling threatened to overwhelm her as the edges of her vision blurred, but Anne kept on.
'I have answered their charges, but have they brought more evidence before me? Have they produced witnesses? I speak to every mother, wife, and daughter of good and just England. Were you able to perform your wifely duties so soon after childbirth or a miscarriage?”
The women began to cry out their protest that ‘the good Queen Nan was surely innocent’ and that they would ‘have none of those Seemores’. Anne was sweating profusely and her vision was beginning to blacken, but she had to save herself, for only the people could sway the King to her cause.
“So how then could I commit adultery? Be not deceived by this wickedness. Entreat to His Majesty the King, who is just and wise to not listen to unwise council and to aid me in my moment of need for I am innocent!’
The uproar from the crowd was deafening; shouts of ‘Good Queen Anne!’ and ‘God save the Queen!’ could be heard beyond The Tower.
As the panel shouted for order to be returned, the world around Anne went dark, and as the ground rushed up to meet her, she felt a familiar stab in her belly, heard the screams and shouts from the crowd, and felt the warmth trickle down her legs. Then there was nothing but darkness and the things that dwell therein.
