I closed the book.

“You have lived a good life, my dearest, loveliest friend. You have borne the weight of England’s Reformation on your shoulders. You have used your influence to place men who stand solely on Scripture”—I looked at her almoner—“throughout the Church of England and they will stand, and lead others, long after you are gone. You have borne a good daughter. You have been a most excellent wife and loyal friend. The rest is now to faith.”

Anne nodded. “Saint Peter reminds me that I am called to suffer wrong and take it patiently and without rebuke.”

“And Saint Paul writes to the Romans, ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but give room unto the wrath of God, for it is written: vengeance is mine, I will reward, saith the Lord.’ I admit to an unseemly eagerness to see what vengeance our Lord has in mind for Henry.”

Anne allowed herself a little smile. “Dear Meg. You are always constant.”

“Well, ’tis in Holy Writ!” I exclaimed. That brought a fuller smile from her, and it was lovely to behold.

“You are right,” she said. “’Tis easier to be meek when you know false charges will not go unanswered. I shall follow in the path of my Master. To do otherwise would be a burden on my soul—and a weapon for Henry to use against my daughter.” Her black eyes grew sharp again. Her mind had lost nothing to grief.

We prayed for a time and then, nigh on daybreak, she awoke me. When I looked at her, I saw she was firmly in control of her emotions. Her hands did not tremble. Her smile was steady. Queen Anne was back.

“Rise, Meg. We must dress.”

TWENTY-SIX

Year of Our Lord 1536

The Tower of London

In my final duty as mistress of robes I dressed Anne in a modest gown of gray damask, which had been lined with fur against the morning chill. It was good English fabric for a good English queen. She insisted on wearing an English gable, for modesty, and not the French hood for which she was so well known. “I was born an English girl, and I shall die an English woman,” she said. I brushed her long, beautiful hair one last time, so it would glisten, and for her comfort, and for memory of our long friendship, before tucking it into the gable and draping her with royal ermine.

“Here.” Anne handed something to me in her gloved hand.

“What is this?” I asked, taking it from her.

“It’s my jeweled prayer book. I no longer need it,” Anne said with a smile. “Do you remember how, on the night Will Ogilvy declared that he would become a priest, you handed me your prayer book? Said you had no use for it, nor for Will, nor for God any longer?”

I smiled and laughed with her. “Yes, Anne, I recall it well. ’Tis not a night I am likely to forget!”

“I read from it, your beautifully rendered Latin, your thoughtful notes, whilst I served Queen Claude.”

I took it from her hand. “I shall think of you each time I read it.” I opened it up and on the front page she had written, Remember me, when you do pray, that hope doth lead from day to day.

“To remember me by,” she said.

I took her in my arms and we clung to one another as we had when one of us had tumbled from a steed as girls. “Nihilo quo tui meminerim mihi opus est,” I said.

I need nothing to remember you by.

I opened the door to the Queen’s Lodging and let my lady lead ahead of us. It was a short walk past the great hall, where she had once celebrated her coronation and then, recently, defended her innocence, along the west side of the White Tower, built five hundred years past by William the Conqueror. We passed by it and we caught the first glimpse of the scaffolding upon which she must stand.

There were nigh on one thousand people come to watch—the king had decreed that only Englishmen and Englishwomen might view the beheading, no foreigners of any rank. There were some catcalls and some jeering and nary a word of encouragement. We passed by my lord the Duke of Suffolk and his young bride, Katherine Willoughby. We passed by the Duke of Richmond, the king’s bastard and Anne’s stepson, who bowed his head just enough for the crowd to notice. I silently thanked him for it. Anne’s cousin, his wife, Mary Fitzroy, was not there.

We stopped at the bottom of the scaffold and she turned to me and put her mouth close to my ear. “You know why I say what I will say and I do it willingly. But if you ever have occasion, do not be reluctant to commend me to His Grace and tell him that he hath ever been constant in his career of advancing me; from private gentlewoman he made me marquess, from marquess a queen, and now that he hath left no higher degree of honor he gives my innocence the crown of martyrdom.” She wanted to have the last word, our Anne, up to the last day. I was gladdened to see the spark had not left her.

She kissed my cheek and looked me in the eye. I nodded my agreement, knowing I could say no such thing if I wished to retain my head. I let the tears slide freely down my face and I could hear Nan Zouche sob in the background.

The constable took Anne’s arm and helped her up the hastily built wooden stairway and I alone followed. She walked to the edge of the platform and addressed the crowd, voice firm, face bold.

“According to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, gentle, and sovereign lord.”

She did not admit guilt nor make a false confession. I knew upon what she stayed her mind: the Henry of nearly a decade, who had wooed and won her, who sent her sweet letters and fine jewels and argued points of religion with her and offered her the choice bits off of his plate. If ’twere to be that which she chose to hold in her last moments, and not the tyrant the man had of late turned into, I should not begrudge her, nor anyone, fine memories at the end of her life.

“And thus I take my leave of the world, and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me,” she finished.

The crowd, of a sudden, turned and grew respectfully silent. “God bless you, Your Grace,” one called out loudly, and there was a wave of hums of approval and agreement.

Anne returned to the center of the platform. I gave her an encouraging look and removed her ermine mantle, leaving her gracious white neck unencumbered. She stayed me from lifting off her headdress; instead, she took it off herself, first shaking free her magnificent black hair one last time afore tucking it under a modest white cap.

“Jesu, receive my soul; O Lord God, have pity on my soul,” she spoke as she knelt. I knelt near her to tie a blindfold around her eyes—she, unlike many others led to this place, needed nothing and no one to restrain her in her place. I had scarce stepped back from tying the blindfold when the sword of Calais sliced through the air and through her neck, severing her head in one clean blow. I heard gasps and sighs from the crowd and then nothing.

Her head rolled but a little way from her body, and I could see her lips still moving in silent prayer for a few moments while the blood pumped outward from the body and from the head. I was stuck firm in my place by the horror of it, jarred loose only by the clattering of Nan Zouche and Alice as they ran up the stairs with linen. I quickly leaned down and picked up her head, eyes still open and aware as the linen slipped from them, as they looked at me. I willed the bile back down my throat and forced myself to look into those eyes with love for the few moments before awareness dimmed from them.