The sun shone down on the Tower Green, the grass sparkling with dew as the crowds gathered outside the Tower of London for this momentous day. Their whispers and shuffling of their feet heralded the anticipation of the blood to flow. The four male traitors had already been beheaded the previous few days, and the unruly crowd were still thirsting for more. Nothing else seemed to satisfy them, apart from the ale and beer they could find at the numerous pubs and taverns in the hustling, dirty streets of London. The women especially were agitated, the rough peasant women and fishmongers pushing against each other in their dirty clothes and rags for the prime positions. Everywhere, the streets were thronged as if for a triumphal parade of heroes’ home from the wars that plagued England and its borders.

Charles V of Spain was warmongering again for English blood, his Flemish soldiers hungry to claim the heads of their hated channel neighbours. Since the casting off and divorce, then the death of his aunt the Queen Catharine of Aragon, Charles had been far too eager to pick battles with Henry VIII of England and his troops. The King was far too aware that grudges ran deep in the Habsburg line, especially in the Spanish section. But, he had done what he believed he had too, and he certainly wasn’t going to lick the boots of an upstart like Charles. After all, the Queen was dead and her daughter was a bastard in the eyes of the true Church of England, forbidden to show her face at court and reduced to a paltry sum of allowance. The papist Emperor could think what he liked, could wage as many wars as he liked but it wouldn’t change that simple fact and the fact that Henry was the master of his own domains. The idea that a foreigner could dictate what Henry Tudor could and could not do rankled the rapidly fatter monarch deeply, another reason why the wars continued and servants trod carefully around him. An irritated or angry king boded ill for anyone who roused his displeasure and wrath. At the moment, the list of those he was displeased with was growing and with disastrous and very deadly consequences.

Far away from the Tower of London and the wife he had abandoned to the swift blade of the Frenchman from Calais, Henry wasn’t thinking of his opponents, or of court, or of the internal problems going on in his absence. He wasn’t even thinking of the unsurprising and utterly predictable judgement pronounced in the last few days or the divorce he’d just been given. Instead, every thought in his broad and very sharp mind was for his most recent love – Jane Seymour. Although her beauty was of middling stature, that was not the issue here. His previous wives had both been beautiful in appearance but it had not lasted as they grew older and look where it had gotten them in the end. One divorced and disgraced then dead and the other one about to be led to the exact same fate. But Jane...she was so different, so very different. The beauty he’d been ensnared in was internal, the radiance of her skin, the beaming of her smile, her effort to please, her gentle manner and her kindness to others. Oh yes, he’d watched her as she was at court and liked what he saw. She was genuine, and oh so soft. But modesty, ah yes, that was the one thing above all that she possessed in abundance.

The way she blushed when he kissed her, her modest clothing that she insisted on wearing when the other ladies wore far less clothing and looser corsets, the stammering of her words when their gazes locked, the way she carried herself and the fact she wouldn’t be bedded before they married. In his hands, he fiddled with a thick gold ring that carried the crest of the Seymours. When he’d pledged to marry her, she had given him this ring as a token of her agreement and her unfailing love. The thought of bedding her was so strong in him, but Henry Tudor was not a man who would force a woman to have sexual relationships with him, Charles may be, or Francis, but never Henry. He prided himself on his gallantry and God be damned if he would give it up for sex. A good king never did that, which set him higher than his rivals in his own eyes. So, he waited there in the room as the hour of reckoning ticked closer and he would be free to marry again. Marry his Jane...and have many sons. This was the woman, he told himself. The woman who would give him his deepest desire – a healthy son.

---

A slim figure was silent back at the Tower, the unwilling recipient of the masses’ attention. Anne Boleyn was tired and it showed, in her eyes if not in her face. The disgraced former Queen would maintain her dignity and grace to the end, entrust herself to the Heavens and pray for the stroke of the sword to be swift. Henry had owed her that small pleasure, had granted it to her as a gesture of the thing they had once had together. ‘Funny how simple it was to think in past tense,’ she wondered to herself as the attendants dressed her in her simple clothing and fretted over her long black hair, the locks still carrying the shine that had once enchanted her husband. She was not sorry, not sorry for all that she had done in that life. But she was sorry for her child, Elizabeth. What would happen to the precocious toddler once she was dead? Would her father love her still or would she be cast off like her half-sister Mary Tudor, to be a bastard and stigmatised for the rest of her life?

Sighing once, her eyes moist and salty tears trickling from the corners of her eyes, she pulled herself together as her locks were swept up into a white linen coif and settled by the back of her skull. The last few arrangements of her clothes were checked, very beautiful and serene it made her seem. A mantle of ermine was draped majestically over a loose gown of damask, dark grey in hue and complimented by fur and settled next to a crimson petticoat. Looking at her reflection, the former queen smiled slightly at the irony. She was going to her death, yet she looked like she was dressed for court. Holding her chin high as the tears dried up and disappeared, she took a deep breath and the doors opened in front of her.

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Henry waited for the messenger, Jane with him as they waited for the news of the execution. Fifteen minutes.

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Anne walked slowly to the centre of the Green and knelt at the block, placing her head on it carefully. She had said her piece, and was ready. Five minutes.

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The swordsman called out “Bring me the Sword!” Anne turned her head. It was done.

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The hour hand struck and the London bells rang out as the gathered rabble cheered with all their might. Anne Boleyn was dead. Long live Queen Jane! In the apartments, the lovers clung together and Henry held Jane as she cried into his chest. The future to them was bright and full of hope that everything would be fine. Anne was gone, Catharine was dead and gone and there were no mistresses, no problems abroad anymore. However, if either one of them had known what would happen within the next three years, perhaps the jubilation of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour would not have been so visible or so filled with joy.