A Prayer for Queen Anne

“I’m telling you ma, I saw it with me own eyes!” 

“You’ll not lie to me, boy! You couldn’t have been on the Tower Green on any day, let alone a day like today.”

The boy was close to tears, not just from the boxing his mother had just dealt to his ears-nevermind that he knew she went lighter than she was able. He was strangely close to weepy trying to sort out what he had just witnessed. 

Compounding his confusion was that his mother didn’t believe him. Could she not see it all over his face? Could she not see that he had been changed?

And then his ma stopped her yelling. She took a step back and she saw him. She ruffled his hair. She sat down in one of only two chairs they owned, both wobbly, handmade by their pa. She patted the seat of the other. 

“Tell me all,” she said. “From the beginning.”

He wished he had never become embroiled with the vicar’s gambling schemes. It had proven to be more troublesome than expected, given the hours he was called upon to deliver, and coming up with lies to his family on his whereabouts. But a farthing for each time he ran funds to the other side of the river bought a loaf of bread, or a quarter bushel of apples-food that could save his ma and siblings from hunger on any given week that his father felt beckoned into the alehouse. 

This morning’s sun was promising, with no indication of the masses that would sweep him into the fortress that was the Tower of London in order to witness the atrocity to take place.  

“I could see something was about to happen. And I don’t know, ma, I’m sorry, I couldna bring myself to leave. I probably couldn’t have got out had I wanted. We’s were packed in.”

“Did you see her, then?” his ma whispered, clutching a hand to her chest.

“I did. I didn’t know it was her at first. I didn’t know why we were all there. Then, people around me began to whisper: There she is. It’s the Queen. She was so small. She hardly looked bigger than sis.”

Were those tears in his mother’s eyes? His ma had admired King Henry’s new queen. She loved to hear about Anne Boleyn’s French ways, the new fashions she brought with her (she’d even sewn one of her woolen kirtles into a square neckline). She had not held the new queen at fault for poor Queen Katherine’s situation for she knew men and their machinations well enough. Queen Katherine herself had been much beloved, and her reasons for being thrust aside were confounding to those outside the palaces. 

The family had followed the saga with a spectator’s detachment. After all, the outcome had no effect on their lives, and they weren’t much concerned with which Pope held power; the paper one, or the one in Rome. But the drama was as riveting as any play the pageant wagons put on. 

“Was she wearing all black then, for an execution?”

“She wore a robe of gray with a scarlet kirtle underneath it. She had her hood up. At first, I thought how lucky I was, ma. That I was about to see the queen, and all I could think about was the swiftest way to run home to tell you.”

“Did she say anything?” His ma asked urgently.

“I tried to memorize every word-I swear! But after what happened... afterwards, it was like the words were spirited away from my brain. I only remember she said she’d been condemned to die so she wasn’t not going to blame no one. I didn’t understand all the words, what they meant. She blessed the King and-”

His ma gasped. “How could she? That poor, long-suffering woman…”

“So then she doffs her hood, and her hair, she wore it long and it was dark, like the sky just after sundown.” He felt the story rising in him. “Her maids handed her something white and it was a cap for her hair. I didn’t understand then why she wanted to tuck her hair away.”

His ma instinctively palmed her neck.

“The maids started crying, some women around me, too. I heard more whispers around me: She couldn’t produce a son. She was unfaithful with her brother. She is a witch. This should have already been done.”

“Yes, of course. They made her wait, didn’t they? Those cruel men. They postponed hours at a time, only to have her agonise yet another night.” 

“They-they put a blindfold on her. That’s when I felt scared and I looked around for a way out. I didn’t want to be there no more. I didn’t want to see what was coming. 

She started praying, at least it had the sound of prayer. People around me went to their knees, so many were crying. I wanted to cry too.” He didn’t feel embarrassed to say this aloud for he felt if grown men had cried, there was no shame in a boy doing so. But he hadn’t let his tears fall then. His emotions were too busy trying to sort out what was happening, how to get out, and worry at being caught where he shouldn’t be.

“And then, I couldn’t bring myself to look away-forgive me, ma.” She reached out and stroked his back. “Queen Anne knelt down. She put her neck on the black stone. It was so quiet, I swear I could hear the heartbeat of the man beside me. The Queen kept turning her head on that stone, she couldn’t see, I think that’s why. She couldn’t see the man in the black hood and she wanted to know...maybe she wanted to know where it would come from. The whole time she was whispering her prayers.” 

He knew about wanting to know where the next blow was going to come from. When his pa was in his cups he often took out his anger at the world on his two boys--never the women though. 

He gathered his breath. It came more rapidly now, just like when he was there in front of her. “Finally, the hooded man, he asked another man to pass him his sword even though he had it right there in his hands. But it made the queen turn her head just the right way, and in a second he raised that sword and-”

His ma took him in her arms. 

“I, I couldn’t watch, ma.” 

“Of course, child. It’s alright.” She rocked him in back and forth, her little boy, aged by years in one morning. 

“I wanted to watch for her. She was so brave, even though she was so scared. She was brave, and I thought I wanted to be brave for her too, but I couldn’t.” Now, he let his tears fall. 

“You are brave. Never think otherwise.” She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, then wiped at his with the hem of her scratchy apron. “We’re safe from those royal folk and what they do to each other, never fear. There are many kinds of people in the world and we are not to judge. That is the Lord’s job, isn’t it? Now, let’s say our own little prayer for Queen Anne.”

“She’d want us to say one for King Henry too,” the boy said.

“Then we shall.”