At This Time a Queen Shall Be Burned (Kathleen Danielson)

For my comps  I wrote a 17,000 word novella called “At This Time a Queen Shall Be Burned.” It’s about Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives, who was executed in 1536 for alleged adultery, incest, and treason. Specifically, I focus on the two weeks she spent as a prisoner in the Tower of London before her execution.

 

Transcript

I wrote a 17,000 word novella called “At This Time a Queen Shall Be Burned.” It’s about Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives, who was executed in 1536 for alleged adultery, incest, and treason. Specifically, I focus on the two weeks she spent as a prisoner in the Tower of London before her execution.

First off, here is a very simplified timeline of Anne’s downfall, which was the bare bones of my comps. It’s obvious that whether Anne was guilty or not, she received little justice. Not only did Henry order his wife’s execution, but he also divorced her, and gave her only a one-day trial that was most likely rigged.

This timeline was one of the things that drew me to Anne’s story when I took Princes, Poets, Power with Tim Raylor my junior spring. I researched her downfall for a presentation, and discovered the fittingly ironic quote that gave me the title of my comps.

So my goals for my little novella weren’t to solve the mystery of Anne’s guilt or innocence, or make a Wolf Hall-level contribution to the Anne Boleyn canon, but just to do a few things that I haven’t seen done in most fictional media about Anne. First, I wanted to emphasize the fact that Henry divorced Anne the day before her trial, declaring that they had never legally been married. The funny thing about this is that by definition you can’t commit adultery if you’re not married, so the day before her trial Henry basically made her innocent. Obviously that didn’t matter, but it goes to show the hypocrisy of Anne’s whole downfall. Second, I stubbornly insisted on writing a first-person narrative in an attempt to deal with the psychology behind Anne’s crazy-sounding antics that were recorded by her jailer, Master Kingston. And third, in a later draft I added some nonlinear segments, both in an attempt to give the narrative some structure and to add a sense of confusion and desperation to Anne’s perspective.

Now I’ll read the last chapter while you watch my cat playing with a binder clip.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

May 19, 1536

The sun rises, and so do my ladies, and it is time for me to ready my body for death.

My ladies braid my hair and search through my clothes. Lady Boleyn offers me earrings and a necklace, but I push them away. Before the morning is done my head and body will be parted; there is little sense in bedecking either.

When my plaits have been bound up I turn to the clothes they have laid upon the bed. A crimson kirtle, trimmed with ermine, and a gray damask gown.

So I shall die in crimson, I think, for I will mourn not for myself. That is others’ task; I must simply die with grace, knowing they have made me innocent.

They serve me a final meal, and my ladies and I eat quietly: I tranquil, they dispirited. As the servants clear away the food, Kingston enters. I look at him, and I wait.

“It is time,” he says. “Are you ready, madam?”

“Acquit yourself of your charge,” I say to him softly, “for I have been long prepared.”

He lowers his head and steps aside, gestures me out the door. In formation the six of us go out, two by two, Kingston and I ahead. He leads us past the Great Hall, through Coldharbour Gate, along the western wall of the White Tower, where the shadows sit so deep and damp that I shiver in the chill. And as we round the corner I see the scaffold, waist-high, draped in black, crowded round with people: an audience, for a spectacle. A set of steps along the side, and something missing—

“There is no block,” I say, frantic, to Kingston.

“No,” he says, and lays a soothing hand upon my arm. “You shall die kneeling.”

The way I began.

We approach the scaffold. I would slow our pace but Kingston pushes on, on. There are no guards, no barriers to keep the crowd from touching me, but none attempt it; they part before us, eyes shamelessly devouring me, my body, my uncrowned head.

We reach the steps and I falter, I whisper, “Master Kingston,” and he turns, holds out his arm. I wrap my hand around his elbow, and as we climb the steps I feel I will not be able to let go.

But I must, and so I wrench my nails free of his sleeve, and I take the final step alone.

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If you want to read the rest of it, it’s been published!!! I am so excited about this, and thank you to the Magazine of History and Fiction for accepting my work.

Thank you also to everyone who helped me as I was writing—my advisor Tim, my mom, my roommates, and my boyfriend, for being my beta readers. Unfortunately I lacked the benefit of the peer editing group that the other creative writing compsers had access to, so having friends and family read my drafts was invaluable. Also thank you to the loves of my life, the OED and Eric Ives and my incredible Anne Boleyn Spotify playlist. Ok that’s all, thanks for listening!