Anne Boleyn And The Death Of The Tudors

The End

Anne

All sounds cease as the crowd holds its breath. I strain to see through the coarse black cloth covering my eyes, only able to make out dim shapes of people before me. As though they are the ghosts and I am the only one still living.

A raven cries out overhead and I hear a sob escape one of the women behind me. I ignore it. I have no time nor patience left for grief. Elizabeth's face comes unbidden to my mind but I push it away. I can not, will not, think of her now.

I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the fresh, moist air of the early morning, straining to experience as much of the world as I can in these last few moments. The freshly made wooden scaffold is solid beneath my knees and I can feel the rich damask of my gown caressing my legs as it spreads out like a cloud around me.

The smell of the grass on the green below is pleasant compared with the fetid odour of the London streets and the stale smell of my room in the tower. A scene flashes behind my blindfold, evoked by the scent of that fresh new grass - two little girls and their beloved brother, running and spinning through a field of endless green. The image is gone before I can grasp it, before I can hold it to my heart for comfort.

How has it come to this? The wheel of fortune does turn a merry trick. I chuckle quietly to myself and hear the people around me shift nervously. They must think I have run mad. I have given them reason enough to believe this over the last days. No...I am perfectly, unrelentingly sane. Madness, mayhap, would be easier.  I am acutely aware of my position and all I have lost.

I have had the love and desire of a king.  Perhaps there was no love, merely a desire to possess his idea of me. Henry...  I shake my head slightly to try to banish him, yet I can sense him despite his physical absence, he is the ever-present puppeteer. He controls the very end of my life and I feel such rage. I swear I will haunt his dreams until his death, this can be my only revenge.

I have no power, no future, and I am finally and completely his, to do with as he wills. I know that there will be no mercy from Henry, he is not one to back down once his desires are in sight. The French swordsman will not delay. He travelled from Paris at the request of the king and he will do his job well. At least Henry granted me this, this last courtly act for "his Anne". A quick, clean death by a skilled swordsman, rather than the clumsy hacking of the executioner's axe. Henry always did like to play the gentleman.

I am ready and I hold my head high. I have made my last speech, made my final confession to my loyal friend and confessor, the Archbishop Cranmer.  I have said my goodbyes to this world and I await the next. All I control now is how I meet my death, and I will meet it well. I am Anne Boleyn and he will not take my strength.

I squeeze my eyes shut and give a faint nod to indicate my readiness, to submit to my fate. I hear the French swordsman call for his weapon and turn my head instinctively towards his voice. I hear regret, he finds no joy in this. I savour his voice; low and deep, melodic French. The last voice I will ever hear is French, that makes sense. I have ever had a fondness for all that is French. I find that I can no longer stop the tears that begin to soak the fabric of my blindfold. The rise of fear in my breast.

Suddenly, I hear it, before I am ready. The high whistle of a sharp blade slicing through the air. Time seems to slow. I hear my waiting women gasp. Anne Boleyn: the ambitious virgin, the great whore, the beloved wife, Queen, revolutionary, witch... is about to die.