Anne with the Black Eyes

Anne With the Black Eyes

SPRING, 1536 – TOWER OF LONDON

A raven sat high upon the White Tower of London, the heart of the English monarchy, the stones beneath its gnarled feet thick and steadfast. The old bird turned its stiff head towards the city, quiet and removed of the usual smoke and noise. It puffed out its feathers against the cold of the oncoming dawn and settled down to watch for anything interesting that might come its way.

That the landscape was quiet was interesting enough. London was a city that existed in perpetual motion. The morning light brought with it the rich smell of burning wood and cooked dough to waft above the reeking raw sewage and rotting food cast down to choke the streets and river by its inhabitants. It was rather insulting to the old bird on the Tower, as ravens are clean animals, but to be near humans was to be near opportunity. Thousands of small oval loaves were being readied for the population to greet the day with. London’s citizens threw open their shutters and blew out the open candles that illuminated the black streets for late travelers. They emptied their chamber pots over the sill to the filth, drew on yesterday’s clothing, and readied themselves for the day.

On any other morning the shops would raise their shutters to display their goods, pass out food, and call their services. In one house a man would be carving wooden trenchers, in another would be heard the loud kachunk of women working the pedals of their looms as their shuttles slid swiftly back and forth. But here all was silent. In the lower parts of the city blacksmiths stirred their coals with unease, while silversmiths rubbed their spoons and salt cellars for luck. On this day the boatmen tented their ropes and the bargemen shelved their poles, avoiding the bridge. On this day the city paused. No carts crept along the cobbled streets; no peddlers sang their wares from doorway to doorway. “Cowsfoot, horseslip, blind yer’ eye, rose in your pot! Cut wood, hen’s eggs, rarebits with the pelts on!” All the voices were silent, as if all of London were afraid to breathe.

Above it all, patient, eternal, stood the White Tower with its stone walls so thick that a cannon couldn’t fire through and its high, narrow windows. It was a last refuge in times of crisis, birthplace of royalty, a depository for the treasury, armory, and dangerous prisoners of all kinds. The Tower ruled the city, a great sentinel of fear and security. Recently it had been the home of a Queen, not some promising young woman just come from her coronation or mother-to-be laying in, but a sad and patient prisoner awaiting her execution – Henry VIII’s second Queen, Anne Boleyn. And it was to this grave matter that the city of London turned its thoughts and hearts today.

The raven turned its dark eyes towards two small figures moving along in the early light. A stout baker and his round wife were tugging a cart full of baskets filled with hot bread up the hill towards the execution grounds. The day before several nobles and one court musician met their ends there and business promised to be good for a large crowd of people had turned out to watch it. The bird could see what the crowd did not know. The Tower Warden, anticipating a riot, had moved the scene of Anne’s final moments to a small interior courtyard. He decided at least that it would be worth it to shake off the cold, spread his wings and fly down to where he would be closer to all that food.

The baker and his wife were London-born, for the city bred it’s own unique brand of people – independent, opinionated, and with great fortitude – and it would have been hard for them to be anywhere else. They thrived on the constant drama that fueled the city, the gossip, the pageantry, and the never-ending flow of people and goods from far-off countries. The nerve center of England, through which all the country’s wealth and knowledge passed, this was London.

The man’s hands were callused, used to handling hot bread, wooden paddles, and rough brick. His wife’s plump face was streaked with suet and her clothing dusted an uneven shade of brown from the flour. Between them they were wearing the byproduct of several week’s worth of baking, rubbed into their hair, encrusted beneath their fingernails, soaked into the stiff cloth of their middle-class clothing. They had not bathed since the past fall and smelled like it but they would do so for the King’s upcoming nuptials to the Lady Jane Seymour. Their teeth they could not replace, but they had escaped the scarring of the pox that ruined so many faire English faces. All-in-all, they were typical of the many people heading up to see the execution of England’s most hated Queen.

They were disappointed when people walking back towards the Tower Bridge told them most of the spectators had been turned away at the gate. But the bread was already selling so they kept walking, the smell of loose money stronger than the smell of blood, immersed in the deeply human need for spectacle and the more base need to turn another’s misery to their own gain. The raven watched them for a chance at a free meal, hopping along the wall with impunity. To harass the legendary black birds was forbidden and he had no fear. He was an ancient creature that pilfered food and treasure from the humans at the Tower. High up, near the top, he had a small treasury of his own filled with glittering objects – coins, chains, ribbons – all proving his worth as a robber. But for now he was hungry and loaves were teetering precariously upon the edge of the cart. As they neared the crowd the woman paused to shift her load and a small loaf toppled out unnoticed. The great bird took flight and snapped it up before anyone could make a grab for it. He flew it away, perused by younger members of his tribe that were not so adept at the craft.

The baker and his wife gaped at the long line of nobles, servants, and men-at-arms gathering to view the execution. “I dunno how they make so much trouble for themselves!”

“I knew it were a bad omen when I saw her come the first time to London,” the wife knowingly commented. “She bore the signs of sure witchcraft upon her.”

“They say she ‘as got six fingers!” he husband agreed.

“And Sainted Queen Katherine not even dead yet! Put her in the grave, it did. And poor Princess Mary…” She went on like this with great authority, drawing customers with loose opinions and loose purse strings.

The object of their comments was making her way slowly towards the private courtyard of the White Tower. Her women, her Warden, and a small guard surrounded her. She was Anne Boleyn – Queen, commoner, traitor. She made her way through the low halls of the Tower, room by room, whilst curious guards followed her with their eyes. Draped in a cloak the color of the clouded sky she appeared to be already wearing her death shroud. Her dress was plain and well-made, trimmed with ermine against the cold, a small luxury left to her by her husband.

There were no more tears, no faints, no begging for mercy as she led the company. During her last dark days imprisoned she had known it was over and spent her grief. Forced into play by a man without Master she had gambled all on the richest of tables and lost, bringing forth from her belly only one living child, a girl, no heir for England. All or nothing. Her embroidered slippers whispered softly across the old worn stones. It seemed to those watching that she floated, and indeed they would swear later that she looked as if she were already dead.

She seemed unaware of the people watching her, but the shadows of those who had long passed through those cold halls to their final ends called to her. “Hurry!” they whispered. “We will wait for you!” She stepped out into the yard and lifted her thin face to the hidden sun.

Anne Boleyn had been a woman of legendary beauty, a jewel of the realm. When Henry Tudor first saw her he was already sleeping with her sister but he was a man who wanted only what he did not have and soon tired of what was his. Anne knew firsthand the price that a mistress paid, an unadorned childbed, arranged marriage away from Court, and when the issue was forced upon her she held out for the status of wife. Henry could not untangle himself from his marriage alliance to the Spanish Princess who had been by his side for twenty years, arranged by his own father’s dying wish, and who had already presented the country with a grown Princess. The divorce was denied by the church in Rome and opposed by the best men in his own kingdom. It took all of Anne’s charms and beauty, her youth, and finally a successful pregnancy to bring him around. She had gone to her coronation with swollen belly, bearing the Princess Elizabeth.

She had inspired men to great acts. She was beautiful, it was true, with her porcelain skin and great doe eyes, but she had that intangible quality that makes men lose their heads and act foolishly. She inspired the great Henry Tudor. Now her face was traced with lines as if Fate had drawn its cruel talons across her in the darkness of her confinement in some awful punishment. Her hair streaked with gray under her hood. The plump glow of many pregnancies wasted away to a bone thinness under her chemise. Her breath came hard as they walked, her eyes failed to reflect the light. It was as if she had already set her feet into the next world and those around her sensed it.

The Warden called a halt to the march so that Anne could catch her breath, her women gathering close in about her. “Look at them,” she wheezed consumptively. Her long days of confinement had brought on a painful lung infection that festered in the moldy dampness. Anne’s eyes traced the thin cart tracks that wound their way through the grass to a yard crammed full of people, all waiting for her. “How they must hate me!”

Her women tried to console her. They were all dressed in the blue of service with little in the way of lace or jewelry. To stay by her side they had paid a heavy price at Court. “Do not console me!” she snapped. “Do you not think I hear the names they call me? Traitor! Murderess! Adulterer! Great Whore! They have come to see their hated Queen to her doom. But that I had died in my sleep and robbed them of the pleasure.”

She had declined the Headman’s Cart, walking instead to her last test, the grass bending willingly beneath her feet. She had known from the day of her arrest that there would be no change in the King’s heart. Had she not heard him sailing up and down the river every night on the royal barge? Had she not heard her husband’s voice singing as he entertained the women of his Court? Katherine was dead. He was finally to be free; free to live, free to love, free to marry whom he wished. Anne’s women had not been able to keep secret Henry’s engagement to a young woman of Noble birth. She was from a deeply ambitious family, one that would willingly farm out their daughter’s maidenheads in exchange for land grants, patents, and titles. That she could sympathize with. And like Anne she had held out for the marriage bed, exploiting Henry’s one great weakness. Like Anne she held out the possibility of a son to an aging monarch. For this one thing the most powerful man in England would sacrifice everything he owned, everything he loved.

Anne Boleyn was tired; tired of waiting, tired of the rage and the threats, tired of the false pregnancies and the miscarriages, tired of the gossip and whispering voices just outside of her chamber door, tired of being hated, tired of trying. On the day of her arrest she had stood beneath Henry’s window, the baby Elizabeth in her arms as he signed the warrant. One live, healthy baby come out of so many tragedies and disappointments. Henry had glanced briefly out the window. Surely he had seen her. It had mattered not.

The Court had assembles early, everyone wanting to take up the most space, command the most attention. All the Noble Houses were flying colors and she could see them against the cold sky. “They beckon me,” she thought. “I am ready.”

As the condemned drew near the platform the crowd at the gates caught sight of her and began to jeer and yell curses in hostile voices. Whatever dignity and grace the Noble Gallery used to mask their opinions of the matter was lost on the common people. Few of them had been allowed inside, mostly those who could bribe the guards to let them slip past and the traditional beggars. Anne seemed unaware of the shouting but kept her gaze fixed upon some point in the sky just above the scaffold where things were taking place that only she could see.

“Pay them no head, Mistress!” A rock sailed by, cutting off the words of her attendant.

“By God’s Teeth!” barked the Warden. “Who threw that?”

The Captain of the Guard stepped forwards. “It is that riotous mob at the gate, Sir! They are angry that they would not be let in.”

“And that is why!” The Warden was an older man with gray hair and a full beard. Concern and worry had of late brought on a new set of wrinkles and his brow furrowed at the thought of his charge being killed by a missile to the head before she could reach her own execution. A hefty stone bounced off his shoulder. “For God’s sake, stop them!”

Anne’s women raised their hands to protect her from the shower of stones as the soldiers advanced on the gate but Anne herself stood as if transfixed by the pale sky. The guards ordered the crowd to disperse and were rewarded by a sound pelting for their efforts. A lucky shot struck Anne sharply on the hand, drawing blood. “Oh, my Lady!” One of her women grabbed her arm and lifted it away from her dress.

The Warden offered her a handkerchief to hold over the wound. “Madam, let me assist thee!”

“Thank you, Sir! Let it not be said that there are no true men left in England.” She still retained the last of her Queenly Grace. The injured hand was the one that carried the residual sixth finger, the very one that had cemented her conviction for witchcraft. For a woman raised in the French Court, who had ruled over the English, to meet her end in this mean way was not fit. But still she refused to turn her final appearance in public into a spectacle.

The guard made their point to the rude crowd at the gate at the end of their weapons and returned to continue the procession to the scaffold. As they approached Anne was nearly overwhelmed with the powerful smells that came with the breeze. The subtle smells of fresh wood, sawdust, and hemp rope were superceded by the aura of nervous perspiration swirling over the gallery. This in turn was drowned out by perfume, incense, and manure. Locked inside for months at a time she had only smelled mold, the chamber pot, and her own small fire, or perhaps the seething smell of the river. Now she almost thought that she could smell fresh bread and inhaled, enjoying these last pleasures.

The Judges looked down at her. “Mistress, it is time.”

She nodded and stepped forward for the Reading of the Charges. “Adultery against her husband, His Royal Majesty, The King…”

Voices began to drift in from the crowd, drowning out the monotonous droning of the judges in her ears. “Do you believe what they say? That she had The Queen poisoned?” Two brothers were talking without prudence, making an effort to make themselves seen and heard.

“Keep your voices down, My Lords. The King is in a killing mood…”

Other voices lifted. “Mark Smeaton confessed to being her lover.”

“Someone had to confess. He was encouraged.”

“I have heard he was a busy man at Court. Henry should have kept him about. At least his seed ran to sons!” The crowd began to titter, drawing dark looks from the Judges.

“What else was there for him to do? Die without issue?”

“I notice your son has dark hair…”

“I shall see you to account for that remark!”

The Court was growing restless. Anne scanned their faces. What remained of her family was absent, as well as the Royal Family. Those who were there came to show their loyalty and submission to the King and the new Ruling Family of the Seymours. Lesser Gentlemen and Ambassadors had waited since the early morning to get a good spot for the viewing, only to be shoved off as the higher members of the Court arrived. Nobles and Cardinals sat inviolable within their tight circles of lessers and servants while visiting members of every court in Europe made note on every occurrence to be fired off in dispatches home later.

The Court itself, eager to command as much room as possible, had arrived with countless people in tow – grooms, water bearers, secretaries, and personal attendants only to discover that there just wasn’t enough room for everyone. Disappointment led to bitter squabble and small children were lifted into the arms of their caretakers to avoid being caught underfoot.

Anne looked out over a sea of powdered white faces and decided that they looked more as if they had come to celebrate The King’s Birthday than to an execution. It was a gallery of people covered in rouge, lipstick, wigs, fans, ruffs, baubles, earrings, and feathers upon both men and women. They glittered with gold and jewels in the dim light. Heads nodded, fans swayed, and messengers ran back and forth as people tried to unsettle each other. White lead paint covered all manner of defect from crow’s feet to pimple to birthmark to pox scar and slowly ate away at the wearer’s skin. They looked suddenly to her as if the sea in its disgust had vomited up a host of dead faces. But their eyes were alive, burning with hatred and dread, bright and angry.

The charges read Anne stepped forwards to address the crowd when there came suddenly the sound of cantering hoof beats – a late arrival. The guard swung open the gate and stepped aside. All heads swiveled as one and the crowd outside scrambles at the approach of armed men.

“What is this? What is this?” her women asked excitedly. Was Henry Tudor coming at the last moment to recant his anger and reclaim his bride? No, it was a young man who so much resembled him as to be his son, bearing the device of the red and white rose. Henry’s representative, with the power to acknowledge her passing but without the power to stop it. The ceremony had to wait for the gallery to rearrange itself around the new arrivals. The order of Nobility was upset and there was much in the way of hard feelings.

Anne turned towards the young man and curtsied. “I thank thee for coming to see me away, Your Grace.”

He saluted her and raised the red rose in his hand to the scaffold. “We would miss thine final moments for nothing in this world, Mistress!” He turned and addressed the Court so that all might hear him. “That the Crown should know our enemies is only wise!” The meaning of Henry’s thinly veiled message was not lost on those who heard it.

Anne turned her attention back to the crowd. “In mine last hour before you I wish to speak ere I depart. I am innocent of the charges against me. Those who did bear false witness against me shall themselves be judged in turn.”

“Six-fingered witch!” one of the beggars from the bottom of the scaffold shouted.

Anne waived off her attendants, grim with determination. In truth the damming thing was only a small nub growing off from her nail and was too small to be seen save at close inspection. It was enough to keep her long cuffs and gloves. It was not enough to keep Henry from marrying her. She pulled off her gloves and held up both hands for the crowd to see before she continued.

“I do regret that I have spoken harshly to those near to me.” She looked back meaningfully at her women. “And that I have caused great pain to the heart of my husband and King. I ask forgiveness of Queen Catherine and of her daughter the Princess Mary…”

In far off Peterborough, at the tomb of Catherine of Aragone, monks were running and crying of miracles, for all the candles in the tomb had become lit mysteriously, a sign that Henry took to mean that his cast-aside first wife had finally forgiven him.

“…and I ask forgiveness of His Grace who is here with me this day.”

The emissary raised his cup. “I could not begrudge such a last request. Farewell, Mistress Boleyn!”

The only winners in all this were the family of a young woman far away from the tragic scene at the Tower. She was a daughter of a Gentleman of the Court, chaste and demure, carefully guarded towards a larger destiny. Henry was a legendary lover with the best musicians and largest coffers in Europe at his disposal. Women loosed their kirtles and let slip their skirts at his command yet this woman had resisted. He had laid jewels and coin in her lap only to have them returned with a plea for prayers instead. She had been carefully coached and chaperoned by her ambitious brothers until Henry, freed of prior obligation of Catherine’s death and seeing no sons coming from Anne, capitulated with an offer of marriage. She submitted, with the promise of sons born without the sigma of bustardy.

“I am ready.” There was not a man there who did not then admire Anne’s courage in the face of her own death, nor her strength and will, for many a Noble man had gone to the block begging for mercy or fighting for his life. Many women ran from the executioner and no one held them in blame but Anne Boleyn approached her last ordeal with grace and dignity. They respected her at that moment, for every person high and low knew that it might someday be their heads upon the block.

“Do you have any Gifts of Charity?” asked her Warden.

It was customary for the condemned to give away the last of their possessions so that they might arrive humble before God. Anne removed her outer clothing and gave them to her women. Her slippers she gave to her Warden. “Take these, mine slippers, good, gentle Sir. For you have been a close friend to me and always true. I bid thee keep them for me always.” He put his head down, unable to speak.

Her women brought her two bags of coin, one for the beggars at her feet and one for the executioner. She opened the smaller bag and they pressed forward, dirty faces upturned, hands stretched out. She could see for the first time their wrinkles and sores, missing teeth and empty eye sockets. She had always lived in protected isolation, now they were close enough to touch her; so close that she could smell their matted hair, their lice, their fleas, their boils, their puss, their madness, their need. They babbled at her with gibbering voices, in a common tongue she could not understand.

The coin spilled from her hand and they fell upon it like hungry rats that feed upon the dead. One very old man with wisps of gray hair covering his rotten skin looked up and jabbed a finger at her. “You! You!” Anne wondered, “Is this what awaits me? Is this what my Hell will be like? Ever condemned to stand for eternity upon this platform?”

Her attention was jerked back by a Judge who stepped forward to present a small glass timer. He set it up for all to see and turned it, setting the sand into motion. “We will now wait upon the King’s Grace!”

Anne stood quietly shivering in her chemise as the minutes slid away. Only she turned her face to the gate. No trumpet sounded. He would not come. The condemned’s teeth chattered as the last grains ran out. “It is over.”

She turned then to face her executioner. Henry had allowed her a French Knight – execution by the sword – rather than to be hacked to death by a clumsy man with an ax. It had taken him an extra day to cross the channel. He bowed and saluted. “Bonjour, My Lady.”

“Bonjour, my good servant.” She handed him the purse, his fee for a swift, sure stroke. Anne did not see the sword at his side, indeed she had dreaded the sight of it! He in fact had hidden it in the deep straw so that she would not lose her nerve. He took the purse and tucked it into his belt.

“Do not worry. My sword is sharp and my aim is sure.”

“Merci!”

Anne declined the blindfold. “I wish to go to meet Death with mine eyes open!” Then she tucked her long black hair up under a white cap so that he would not be hindered in his duties. He gently helped her to kneel at the block but she could not hold still and kept looking back in anticipation of the stroke.

An experienced man, the Knight called out in a commanding voice, “Bring me my sword!” Anne looked forward to see, he drew it quick and gleaming from it’s hiding place and with one decisive blow it was over.

She did not know.

The crowd, taken by surprise, was silent for a moment, then exploded into cheers. They beggars pressed forward, scrambling under the platform to catch the flow of blood in rags and talismans. The Tower Cannon fired, so packed with powder that nearby houses lost their crockery. All of London heaved a collective sigh of relief. Henry ordered an official Day of Celebration and all the great city would feast and drink upon the Crown’s Grace that night. Taverns unbolted their doors, shopkeepers lifted their shutters, and people filtered out into the streets.

The baker and his wife, their baskets empty and their pockets full, made their way back towards their shop. The two brothers shoved their way through the gallery, caring not who they offended, and rode off in great haste. The Crown’s emissary approached the scaffold with care and placed Henry’s rose in the bloody straw beside the body. “Fare-thee-well, Anne with the Black Eyes.”

The old raven watched all this with mild interest turning its head back and forth. Suddenly it spied a glitter upon the green lawn, spread his wings and swooped down to pluck a fallen silver brooch from the grass. The bird spirited it’s new treasure to a secret cache where it turned the pretty trinket over and over with his beak, the commotions of the humans below no longer his concern.

- END –

"Anne With the Black Eyes"

by NC Anderson

For more on Anne Boleyn and other famous people of Tudor England please visit this fine site: - http://www.tudorhistory.org/boleyn/

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