Dear Heart, How Like You This (47 page)
What death is worse than this?
When my delight,
My weal, my joy, my bliss
Is from my sight
Both day and night,
My life, alas, I miss.
For though I seem alive
My heart is hence.
Thus, bootless for strive
Out of presence
Of my defence,
Toward my death I drive.
Heartless, alas, what man
May long endure?
Alas, how live I then?
Since no rescue
May me assure,
My life I may well ban.
Thus, doth my torment go
In deadly dread.
Alas, who might live so,
Alive as dead,
Alive to lead
A deadly life in woe?
Days passed as if I lay in deepest fog. I cannot even remember food or drink passing my lips. My only next, clear memory is of my father, when he arrived in my prison cell, coming through my dungeon door as if frightened of what he would find within. Without a word, my father took me in his arms and there I cried… I cried until there were no tears left for me to cry. Anne once said that it was her heart that wept… my heart… this heart breaking afresh with every beat with grief… It hurt so much, aye, my heart hurt so much that every living moment was an agony.
At length, my father gently shook me, saying as he did so: “Come on, Tom, I know… Oh, my poor boy, I know, but my lad, there is nothing more we can do for them. Let us get your things together.”
He went from me, and began gathering up some of my possessions. He turned to face me, speaking each word slowly as if he doubted my full understanding.
“I have come to take you home, my son.”
In due course, he was able to escort me out of the Bell Tower, back into the world I had left what seemed to me so very long ago. Indeed, it felt to me as if an eternity had passed since the day of my arrest.
*
The mirror in my chamber tells me that I am an old man now. My once dark hair is thick with grey. Lines, not there before, bite deep into my face. Yea, all youth has flown from me. Anne, George, and my dead friends have all taken it with them.
I know what I saw from out the grate of my prison’s cell will remain with me until the day I die. Day and night the smell and vision of blood comes to sicken me. Day and night my aching heart, lying bleeding and broken in my chest, reminds me of all that I have lost. Especially of my loss of Anna. Yea, especially my loss of the woman I loved.
Anne. My beloved Anna. You, Anna, haunt me.
Yesterday, I looked into my bedroom’s mirror and it seemed to me that I could see you. Aye, see you, Anna! There you stood, clearly there behind me, your hair unloosed, its fine, ebony tresses streaming down your back, smiling as only you could smile. Then you beckoned to me, and I turned swiftly to find myself yet alone.
It was the same when I sat by the evening fire. The red and gold embers revealed to me your laughing face. I think I go mad with grief. Anne… Anna… My dark Lady love. ’Tis all finished.
Farewell my lute,
this is the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
For ended is what we began,
Now is the song both sung and past.
My lute be still, for I have done.
I have put the books used as references for this novel in categories; for example, books used in relation to Anne Boleyn will be grouped simply under the title
ANNE BOLEYN
, and so forth.
ANNE BOLEYN
Antonia Fraser,
The six wives of Henry VIII,
Arrow Books, 1998
Retha M. Warnicke,
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989
E.W. Ives,
Anne Boleyn,
Basil Blackwell, U.K., 1986
Hester Chapman,
The Challenge of Anne Boleyn,
U.S.A., 1974
Marie Louise Bruce,
Anne Boleyn,
Collins, London, 1972
Norah Loft,
Anne Boleyn,
G.B., 1979
J. Ridley,
The life and times of Mary Tudor,
G. Weiden Field and Nicholson, 1973
J.J. Scarisbrick,
Henry the Eighth,
University Press, Berkley & Los Angeles, 1968
Francis Hackett,
Henry the Eighth,
The Reprint society, this Edition, 1946
Robert Lacey,
The life and times of Henry VIII,
General Editor: Antonia Fraser, George Weidenfeld and Nicolson and Book Club, London, 1972
Neville Williams,
Elizabeth I,
Cardinal; London, 1975
Jasper Ridley,
Statesman and Saint,
Viking Press, N.Y., 1982
Alison Weir,
Henry VIII, King and Court,
Random House, 2001
SIR
THOMAS WYATT
Kenneth Muir,
Life and letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt,
Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1963
Patricia Thompson,
Wyatt, the critical heritage,
Routledge and K. Paul, Publishers, London, 1974
Stephen Merriam Foley,
Sir Thomas Wyatt,
Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1990
Collected Poems of Thomas Wyatt,
edited by Kenneth Muir, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Henley, 1949
Patricia Thompson,
Sir Thomas Wyatt and his background,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1964.
General editor: Christopher Ricks,
Sir Thomas Wyatt, the complete Poems,
Penguin books, 1978.
Lisle Letters,
edited by Muriel St. Clare Byrne, selected and arranged by Bridget Boland, The Folio Press, London, 1983
ROME
(1523–1528)
Benvenuto Cellini,
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,
translated and with an introduction by George Bull, Penguin Books, 1956
Hugh Ross Williamson,
Catherine de’ Medici,
The Viking Press, N.Y., 1973
Christopher Hollis,
The Papacy,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1964
Andre Chastel,
The Sack of Rome
,
1527,
Translated from the French by Beth Archer; The A.W. Mellon Lectures in fine Arts, U.K.,1983
Christopher Hibbert,
Rome; the biography of a city,
Penguin books, 1985
TUDOR ENGLAND
Roger Hart,
English life in Tudor times,
Wayland Publishers, London, 1972
FRANCE
Desmond Seward,
Prince of the Renaissance,
Constable and Company, London, 1973
MISCELLANEOUS
W.D. Rouse, translator,
Great Dialogues of Plato,
The New American Library, New York, 1956
It is well known to people interested in this period that it is likely Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder wooed Anne Boleyn during her first years at court. It also has been suggested that Sir Thomas wrote some of his best love poetry for her. This suggestion cried out loudly to my imagination, and I believed for a long time before beginning this novel that his poem “Dear heart, how like you this?” would make a good basis for an intriguing book.
There is a story that Wyatt told the King at a Privy Council meeting “the truth” regarding his relationship with Anne Boleyn, saying that the King could not marry a woman who had already been bedded by one of the King’s Servants—meaning Wyatt himself.(i)
As Wyatt was an Esquire to the body of Henry VIII, I find it hard to believe he would have been so foolish as to make such a confession. Indeed, surely this would have meant that Thomas would have been one of the men to be executed along with Anne in 1536 when the King finally convinced himself that his grand passion was the result of some type of witchcraft. Remember, one of the men (Francis Dereham) to be executed with Catherine Howard was a lover she had prior to her marriage to Henry the Eighth.
Despite my efforts to respect documented history whenever possible, I do not claim that my novel is a true interpretation of events as they happened, rather I have shaped my fictional love story around these events, a fictional love story based on people who were once flesh and blood. Herodotus wrote (many, many long centuries ago): “Many things do not happen as they ought; most things do not happen at all. It is for the conscientious historian to correct these defects.” Historians in those ancient times had a much easier employment than do our present day historians! Let me just say here that I have not written this book as an historian, but simply as a conscientious writer.
Nevertheless, these following facts are safely documented and helped give me a structure to flesh my imaginings around: Anne and Thomas did form some sort of strong bond at an early stage in their lives. Indeed, some of Anne’s last thoughts had to do with Tom. This, I believe, one can safely assume, since at her execution she passed to one of the women assisting, her own treasured prayer book,which was to be given to Tom after her death.(ii) Anne and her brother George did have an especially close relationship but, like the Thomas Wyatt I have created, I do not accept incest ever came into it. Rather it was a relationship strengthened by common loves and interests.