Writing to a historical theme is something I love to do, so I was eager to compose an entry for a writers’ group competition for a historical short story. There is so much on TV about Henry VIII, and one drama about this period left me with an abiding image of the poet Thomas Whyatt, arrested for adultery with Anne Boleyn, waiting for his turn on the scaffold. It never came. What did he do while he was waiting? Surely – he had to compose. What could he think about – probably nothing other than the immediate terrifying events.
(An earlier version of this story was placed third in the competition.)
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THE CAGED PEN
How late into the night had sleep come? The day before, the poet had finished a poem, although his tears had splashed the words. His hands had been shaking, but his pen was resolute. It was a collection of verses defending each of the recent dead, celebrating their talents and mourning their loss. It was a salute to them before he went the same way. He had been arrested on the same charges, and it was Thomas Wyatt who really had tried to bed Anne Boleyn.
Today, it was Anne’s turn on the scaffold. Why did he look? He could have whimpered in a corner of his cell with his hands over his ears. Perhaps he had been given that cell, with that view, for a reason. Public execution of a discarded queen was a dramatic innovation that only mad, bad Henry could implement. This was a moment of thunderous significance. Thomas’s quill, a handsome raven’s tail feather, glared at him, demanding to be used. Where should he start? The end, perhaps?
He had seen Anne’s dignified demeanour and diplomatic speech. He had watched as the swordsman’s muscles tensed and he swung his mighty sword through her small neck, sending her head bouncing to the ground. Her body fell, spurting hot blood across the clipped lawn. The pen twitched and guided his hand.
How had she felt in these past few days? The shock of changing in an instant from the first lady in the land into an accused traitor, whisked away from a palace to a prison. Was there a description strong enough for it? Was it like being pushed off a cliff, only to be caught on a branch and dangled until the inevitable creaking and splitting of the wood? The pen jumped in his hand, eager to draft the second verse.
How could he explain a pious queen being paraded into a room full of sour-faced, fat men in furs cataloguing ludicrous charges of adultery? There was a time when such a scene of hypocritical pomposity might have made her laugh. Did the verses of the psalms in Anne’s prayerbook taunt her? …” false witnesses rose up and charged me with things that I did not know” …”my friends stand aloof from my pain and my family stand a way off.” She would have believed, whatever the verdict of men, that God’s verdict on her would be favourable. She had whispered the words of reform into the King’s ears. To some, this was pure witchcraft. To others, this was bravery, and would be her most abiding legacy. The pen nudged Thomas.
What next? What kind of queen had she been to come to this end? Anne had not been a perfect icon for the love of the people. She had been beastly to her rival, Queen Katherine. She made enemies easily. No one could observe it and not think that power had corrupted her, and that her pride might come before a fall. She was extraordinarily confidant, as ambitious as her father, the man who pimped his daughters to the King to advance himself. Anne had refused to be sold cheaply. To aspire to marry the king was phenomenal cheek, it was comedy that bore the seeds of tragedy. But that urge to fly towards the sun, that free spirit, it was an awesome something that inspired! The pen drank deeply from the inkpot. Verse Four was drafted.
And what came before? This was difficult! Anne was once the darling of Thomas’s heart. He remembered her from years before, her enchanting appearance in the latest French fashions and her witty conversation. Before the King had noticed her charms, Thomas was writing poetry about them. She rebuffed Thomas, of course. He was just another unhappily married man in the game for a seductive mistress. Why should she have to put up with that? She did not, and she did not put up with it from the King himself. Thomas squirmed with envy to think of fat, petulant Henry inside slim, graceful Anne, and yet, Thomas had stood aside to let the King woo her. Had he been supporting her ambition, or just showing cowardly deference? She had dared. He had not. It seemed so foolish that he had likened her to a deer being hunted. It was a metaphor that was haunting him now. Thomas had left his lovely doe to be mauled by a greedy hound. He wanted to inject the word “craven” into his skin. He prodded his arm with the nib, but the quill drew back and twisted his hand to the page.
The pen wrote, and re-wrote…. Days of anxiety and nights full of frightening flashbacks dragged on. Thomas felt his inspiration waning. When the knock on the door came that brought his freedom, he was staggered. Cromwell had secured his release. Cromwell, the scheming brute who had engineered this bloody precedent and hand-picked the victims regardless of past loyalties and common interest in the reformed religion. He was now obliged to be Cromwell’s friend, and keep working as a diplomat for a vicious King. Thomas gathered his things. He tossed several papers on to the fire, and made sure that they burned. The raven quill seemed to droop in dismay. Thomas snatched it from the desk and threw it on to the fire with the words that it had made him write.
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This story was featured on BBC Upload, 3rd April 2025
