She looks at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide. “He has ruined us,” she whispers.
“I’m not going to die thinking about that,” I hiss at her. “I am a martyr for my faith, not for a foolish accident. I will never die, and my father will never die either. We will meet in heaven.”
I write to my father. I always knew he would never die and now I am setting off on a journey, and I don’t doubt that I will see him at journey’s end.
The Lord comfort Your Grace . . . and though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, my husband and myself, yet think not, I most humbly beseech Your Grace, that you have lost them, but trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I for my part, as I have honored Your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1554
Two of my ladies, Mrs. Ellen and Elizabeth Tylney, stand with me at the window, waiting for the news that my husband of eight and a half months is dead. They pull me away from the window, laying hold of my arms, my shoulders, as if I am a child, as if I should not see the truth. The lieutenant of the Tower, John Brydges, stands at the door, his face stern, trying to feel nothing.
“I can watch.” I shrug them off. “I have no fear of death.” I want them to know that even in the valley of the shadow of death I am quite without fear. I want them to note it.
God supports me, but I am still horribly shocked when the cart goes by my window, rattling back from the scaffold at Tower Hill. I knew he had been beheaded, but I had not thought that the body would be a head shorter than I remembered him. His actual head has been tumbled into a basket beside the bloodstained body. It is pitiful, it is like a butcher’s shambles where the animals are beautiful beasts no longer but only sliced, skinned parts. There is the only man I ever had in my bed, and who was to me such a threat, such a potency. There he is, cut up, like a banned book with chapters ripped out. His body is headless, it looks so odd. They have dropped his handsome face into a basket and tossed his corpse into bloodstained straw. This is a horror I was not prepared for. I always thought of death as the shining shore, never as a butchered beast, the stiffening of a familiar body, pieces of a boy in a dirty cart.
“Guildford,” I whisper, almost to remind myself that it is him and not some trick of playactors.
The executioner, robed in black, with a high black hood making his faceless head grotesquely tall, walks heavy-footed, behind the tailgate. The cart goes to the chapel, the executioner goes to stand beside the newly built scaffold on the green, his hands folded over his axe, his head bowed. With a start, I realize that he is here, not as part of Guildford’s procession, but for another purpose altogether. He has come to behead me. Although I thought I was prepared, this gives me a heart-stopping jolt. My time has come. However unjust—really, however illogical and contradictory—I, too, will be diminished, reduced, beheaded.
I pause to write in the prayer book for John Brydges. I write at length, lost in this last moment. I am myself. Words never die. I think: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. I think that I understand this: my body will die but my words will live. The bloody wreckage of Guildford’s body has shaken me—but I still cling to the words that never die. My teacher and mentor Kateryn Parr understood this. She faced death without fear. I will do so, too.
“Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant,” I begin.
I do so like “Forasmuch.” I think it has genuine dignity. I write a paragraph, and then another, and then I sign my name, and Brother Feckenham looks at me and says gently: “You can write no more. It is time.”
I am ready. I have to be ready. There is nothing more to write. I have written a description of my discussions with Brother Feckenham, I have written to the queen, to my father, to Katherine. Now, finally, I write a farewell and I have finished my work. I am in my black gown and I have my prayer book in my hands, open.
“I am ready,” I say, and I note the pitiful cringing that makes me want to say: “Wait! Just wait a moment! Something else I must do! One moment, one second, one heartbeat more . . .”
John Feckenham leads the way and I hold my prayer book—my English prayer book—before me, and I try to read from it as we go down the narrow stairs, through the little garden, out of the garden gate and slowly towards the scaffold on the green. Of course, I can’t really see the words as we walk down the stairs, or down the garden path: nobody could. But once again it shows everyone that I am walking to the scaffold with a prayer book before me. Kateryn Parr the queen wrote these prayers, translated them from the Latin. Here I am, going to the scaffold with this evidence of my righteousness in my hand. This is our work. I am prepared to die for it. I will die with it in my hands.
The ladies behind me sob and sob in strangled gulping weeping. I hope that everyone can see that I am not crying like them. I hope that everyone can see that I am praying as I walk, my book before me, my whole presence deeply devout, showing that I am certain of resurrection. We all climb the ladder to the scaffold and assemble on the platform. There are very few people come to watch me be martyred. I am surprised how few. I speak to them.
I was afraid my voice would tremble but I do not tremble. I pray for mercy and I tell everyone, clearly, that I will be saved by the mercy of God—not by prayers from a priest, not by paid Masses in a chantry. I ask people to pray for me while I am alive, I mean them to understand that I don’t need prayers after my death for I will go directly to heaven. “No purgatory,” I want to add, but everyone knows that is what I mean.
I read the Miserere in English, for God can understand English and it is superstition to think that He has to be addressed in Latin. John Feckenham follows me, speaking the words in Latin, and I think how beautiful the language is, and how sweet it sounds today, chiming and interweaving with the English words in the damp misty air with the seagulls calling over the river. I remember that I am only sixteen and I will never see the river again. I can’t believe I will never see the hills of Bradgate again, or the paths where Katherine and I used to walk under the trees, or my old pony in the field, or the caged old bear in the pit. The prayer lasts an oddly long time, a timeless time, and I am surprised when it ends and I have to give things: my gloves and my handkerchief, my prayer book. The ladies have to prepare me for this, my final royal appearance. They take off my hood, my black hood trimmed with jet, and my collar. Suddenly, the time is racing past when there were things that I wanted to say, that I wanted to make sure that I saw before this moment. I am sure there are last words that I should say, memories that I should recall. It’s all happening too fast now.
I kneel. I can hear Brother Feckenham’s steady voice. They put on the blindfold before I have had my last glimpse of the seagulls. I meant to look at the clouds, I meant to be sure of my last glance of the sky. Suddenly, I know fear and I am in the white blankness of a daylight blindfold.
“What shall I do? Where is it?” I scream in a panic, and then someone guides my hands to the block and its solid square roughness tells me that my destiny is inexorable. This is the material world indeed; this is the most material thing I will ever touch. I realize it is the last thing I will ever touch. I grip the block, I even feel the grain of the wood. I have to put my head down on it. I note that the blindfold is wet with my tears, soft and hot against my closed eyelids. I must be crying and crying. But at least no one can see, and whatever happens next, I know that it is not death, for I will never die.
BOOK II
KATHERINE
BAYNARD’S CASTLE,
LONDON, SPRING 1554