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‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning old Fury, ‘I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.’
The church is quiet, almost empty. Though the summer sun streams in through the magnificent stained glass over the altar and warms the place, Anne shivers as the great doors shut behind her; here it seems even the silence has echoes. They fill her lungs and pull her beneath the waves.
She’s here on a visit — a visitation, if you please. An old friend is waiting for her. He wasn’t buried in this church, but the one that stood before in its place. Anne doesn’t know what happened to his grave. But he’ll always be there in her mind, so much so she might as well put up a plaque on her forehead that says Sacred to the memory — she hears, however, that there is such a plaque here, on these walls that almost seem to mock the ones that held him.
So she wanders on her way.
There are a few people scattered about the pews. Some are kneeling. Some are praying. Two women, dressed somberly, are holding vigil by the baptismal font; their low voices find winding ways through the still air and up to the domed ceiling. There’s nowhere for Anne to hide, profiled sharply against the dark wood panels; the pillars are starkly white with slim silhouettes that wouldn’t disguise a guilty face. That’s how it is in church, everything laid bare. That’s how it is in court, too — something Anne didn’t realise until it was too late.
He didn’t know either. She wonders if it would amuse him, this intrigue and secrecy, this clandestine undertaking to see him one more time. Anne remembers the whispers, the lingering touches, the heady rush of a love blossoming in secret under watchful gazes. The ring he slipped on her finger, the terror in his face the night he told her — of Cardinal Wolsey’s discovery, his father’s summons, and the betrothal to Mary Talbot that would seal his fate.
We’re betrothed, she had thought, and I’m betrothed to another — what does one more signify? But naivety is not a virtue Anne possesses, not even in her first life.
So she kissed him goodbye.
That was goodbye for the ages — here he is, her Henry Percy, all that’s left of him.
The gold plaque is half hidden in the shadows of the great staircase. Anne might find a refuge here. She touches it, runs her finger over the inscription that’s supposed to tell of his life. It says his name — it says where he was buried — it talks of the old church, none of which remains. He was employed to arrest Cardinal Wolsey. That was his life, then! That’s cold, cold and dead as the metal under her warm, living hands.
Nothing of his term in Wolsey’s household, of his torn-up marriage and of Isabel, the illegitimate daughter he left behind. Nothing of his work on the borders, the fall-out with his brothers and the sickness that eventually claimed his life. And what about the Henry Percy Anne knew: his steady voice and gentle eyes? His laughter and the silhouette of his face in the dark? That he should be reduced to this — how unbearable it is to live and be left behind.
But no, Henry Percy had been dying long before he was buried. It had been life itself that killed him by inches, reduced him every day to what he was on his deathbed: a broken man.
Anne remembers signing off the inquiry into their precontract. It had been Mary Talbot’s accusation — Mary of the dark and sultry eyes, of the pearl-pale skin and full-moon face. Mary knew the consequences; to the day of Henry’s death she hated him. Henry had sworn on oath that it wasn’t true. And it wasn’t — it wasn’t — they didn’t need the law to bind them. Perhaps that was why Anne had signed it off so easily. In those days, she said “do this” and it would be done; and since she had the crown and the king and the kingdom, bereft of love as she was, she was, in some twisted form, happy.
The most happy — her old motto. A bold claim. Strange to think that, once, she might have had a shot at it.
So Henry went to the borders. Sometime in their marriage Mary had a stillborn child; Anne too has lost children. She heard that Mary eventually left him.
Over the years, slowly, she’d stopped looking for Henry. He was constantly ill — she heard this first with feverish alarm, which subsided as time wore on into a milder sort of pity. They said all his life he was unhappy. She read it in his eyes, the last time she saw him: before her execution, as one of the jury.
‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning old Fury.
Gasping, grasping for life, she met eyes with him across the room, her wild tempest of devastation against his fractured, hollow hopelessness. The men of the jury, sitting high above her, they scorned her; they called her witch and temptress. Henry let them. Perhaps he believed it as well.
Mockingly they asked her, did she, Anne Boleyn, have any defence for herself? She should have known they would never have let her go. But in desperation, she relinquished the last shred of her dignity — and for that, she’s not sure if she will ever forgive herself.
‘There was a precontract,’ she said.
When they asked for his name, she hesitated. On the lips of a lover, names are something sacred — and as she let it fall from hers, she felt she was making the unforgivable exchange of eternal life for a fleeting fingertip’s touch of mortal frailty.
Such is the barter trade of living.
‘Henry Percy.’
I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.
Was it that jury who decided? Or was it the King, the other, the greater and yet the lesser Henry? Still, her Henry had been there, it was him who tried her. And when the die was cast, she saw him collapse — a marionette with severed strings, discarded by the master puppeteer. The hand of life, it seems, had played them sufficiently.
They say Anne still walks, haunts the places where she was happy. She wonders sometimes if she might one day see her own ghost. Would Henry Percy — a chilling finger of fear touches her, and she shivers — but who are those who walk? Is it because they are sad, or vindictive? No, she thinks; because once, they were happy. They search still for the years gone by, for that lost time.
Would Henry search? Did he, in this life, find what he was looking for?
Or did he let it slip through his fingers the way she did?
‘Ma’am, are you looking for something?’
She turns, startled. ‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘I’ve found it.’
‘Service starts in fifteen minutes,’ says the man behind her. He has friendly eyes in a broad face; when she walks out the door she will forget him. Or will she? He is every stranger, every face on the street, every kindness she’s ever received. ‘You’re welcome to stay and have a seat.’
‘Thank you.’
He leaves.
Anne touches the plaque one last time. Her fingerprint smudges over the name: HENRY, LORD PERCY.
‘Goodnight, my love,’ she says.
A door opens nearby, letting in the breeze. The breath of wind stirs up a memory, a line she once read and can’t quite forget. It comes to her only in part, but beginning and end are all she needs.
The words falling like tears, she speaks it like a benediction over the forgotten grave. In the barter trade of living, it is an unspoken rule that there must be penance for peace. A pitiful exchange, Anne thinks, that can only be made even by forgiveness. But for that, she doesn’t dare hope — even her beloved Henry Percy might not deal in that kind of currency.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky —
and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.