The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut:
beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full-stop, beyond its internal
configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of
references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a
network (Foucault,
quoted in Hutcheon 1989).
All novels begin with an idea, a response to
living life. The idea for my first published novel was seeded when, as a
teenager, I first read one of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poems, the poem I will always
think of as Dear Heart, How Like You
This? Many years went by before I was brave enough to marry this poem with
my heart and mind to discover it enabled me to tell Anne Boleyn’s story through
the voice of Sir Thomas Wyatt, which ended up becoming my first Tudor novel.
The idea for The Light in the Labyrinth, my first
young adult Tudor novel, arrived close to a decade after the publication of
that novel. In late December 2008, one of my writing friends asked me to
accompany her to the Melbourne Short and
Sweet Festival, a ten-minute play competition. We spent an inspiring
afternoon watching the performances of the ten finalists, so inspired that we
challenged ourselves to write our own ten-minute plays and see if we could
write something good enough to enter into the 2009 Short and Sweet festival. I
wanted to do it because I hadn’t written a play since High School, too long ago
to count. Smile – since taking up the calling of a serious writer, I am very prepared
to push myself out of my comfort zone because I want to grow as a writer. Sigh.
Signing up for a PhD in Writing provides a perfect example of how willing I am
to suffer for my craft.
But back to my
story. Weeks went by and I realised my first idea for a funny play was proving
not funny at all, and I had to face the fact that writing comedy is something I
still need to conquer. My summer break fast disappearing on me, I tried to
think of another idea for a play; I picked up a copy of my novel, Dear Heart, How Like You This?, and
pondered once more the beautiful painting used as its cover. Edouard Cibot’s Anne Boleyn in the Tower (painted in 1835) helped to inspire my
first novel; now it inspired me anew.
For
reasons I explain in this article, I feel absolutely certain that the
weeping woman in the background is the artist’s depiction of Anne Boleyn. But
who was the girl in the foreground – the girl so desolate, so still with
despair, that she can only hold the hand of the older woman?
That summer day,
my years of research ignited my imagination, and I asked myself the question
asked by all fiction writers, “What if?” “What if, I asked myself, the girl
depicted Anne Boleyn’s teenage niece, Katherine Carey?
I mulled over
what I knew about Katherine Carey. During my research about Anne Boleyn, I had
also been tantalised by titbits of information regarding Kate. A number of historians suggest she may have accompanied
her aunt to the Tower. They also suggested she stayed with her during the long
nineteen days of her imprisonment and witnessed her death. But most historians
generally put forward the year 1524 for Katherine’s birth, some even claim as
late as 1527. If one accepted 1524, that means she was no more than twelve at
the time of Anne Boleyn’s execution.
In the past I asked
myself: would Anne ask an untried twelve-year-old
to support her on this dreadful day? A girl she would have to trust to keep
calm on the scaffold and help deal with her decapitated body afterwards. I
could not give it credence. Even
sixty-seven years in the future, a thirteen-year-old was “held too young” to sit by the body of Elizabeth I during the nights
and days of Watching over the Dead (Cressy
1997, p. 428).
I also asked
myself one further question: would this be Anne Boleyn’s desire, that her
twelve-year-old niece accompany her to the scaffold and witness her death? No,
I thought. Anne Boleyn would have chosen only witnesses of proven maturity;
witnesses who were not only capable of speaking of her end but also understood
their duty to bear witness to her “good death”.
I have no doubt
that Anne would have been utterly determined to make a good death. Her culture
believed the innocent died well, not the guilty. By achieving a good death, she left behind a legacy
of doubt about her guilt. Considering how important these witnesses were to
her, choosing a twelve-year-old to number amongst them, a girl who might break
under the strain of watching her aunt’s final moments and also possibly
undermine Anne’s fortitude to achieve a good death, made no sense to me.
Then I read
Varlow’s `Sir Francis Knollys's Latin
dictionary: new evidence for Katherine Carey'. This article added more weight
to the uncertainty of Katherine’s birth year. An argument for a
fourteen-year-old Kate, a girl mature enough to be with her aunt on the last
day of her life, strengthened – enough for me to imagine her with her aunt on
Anne’s final night in my play Before Dawn Breaks.
My play first gave
Kate voice, but now she wouldn’t leave my imagination. Further tugged by what I
already knew, I wanted to know more. I asked myself, could she be a good
subject for my next historical novel? A character I could construct through novel
writing and, by doing so, would also help me understand and gain meaning about
life? For writing has always been one of
the ways I achieve growth as a human being. I want to build a bridge of empathy
between my text and my reader, but more than that; my own empathy grows by
building that bridge.
My next step was
to study the portraits of Katherine Carey. Kate’s friendly face made it easy to
imagine why Anne would have wanted her with her in the Tower, and until the
very end.
Until the end…I thought about that. Anne
Boleyn’s witnesses also had the duty to oversee proper burial of her
remains. Religion narrates the context
of the Tudor period; the majority of men and women whole-heartedly believed in
the resurrection of bodies on
Judgement Day. Thus, it was very important to them that all body parts were
buried together, for the “bodies of the faithful ‘shall be ‘quickened and
raised up, their souls restored to them again’” (Cressy 1997, p. 385).
Who took up
these final duties of caring for Anne Boleyn’s body? While history does not
tell us their names, we can easily guess their gender. Women, just as they
gathered together to bring life into the world, prepared the dead for burial.
As also in childbirth, the women who took on these duties were, in most cases,
kin or close friends of the dead. If Kate had been there for her aunt’s death,
then it follows she was also one of those committed to care for Anne’s body
afterwards.
My research for my first published novel, Dear Heart, How Like You This?, concentrated only on what was
necessary for the point of view of my character, Sir Thomas Wyatt. Now,
thinking about Kate, I could not remember reading a detailed account of what
happened to Anne Boleyn’s body afterwards – besides noting the fact that they were
forced to use an empty arrow box for her interment because no one had readied a
proper coffin. Did they expect the king to send a last minute reprieve? Wondering
about that, I also reminded myself that their lack of preparation could be
easily explained: no one had ever written before the script for the execution
of a crowned queen of England.
I also wondered
who provided the necessary burial winding cloth? Man or woman, in this time and
place, to be buried unclothed was to
be treated like a beast (Cressy 1997, p. 430). I re-checked two biographies about
Anne Boleyn. Denny (2007, p. 315) and Ives (2004, p. 359) both provided
identical accounts. One of her ladies covered and then carried her head while
the other women wrapped her body. Unaided, they carried her remains to St Peter
ad Vincula. Once in the chapel, they removed Anne’s blood soaked clothes and
placed her in an emptied arrow box. More and more, my imagination placed my
Kate in the chapel. My imagination painted her as a grief stricken young girl
who now helped ready her aunt for burial.
Hoping to find
out more, I soon added another book to my Tudor library. Geoffrey Abbott’s Severed Heads, British Beheadings through
Ages. Abbot (p. 42) includes the account of the historian Crispin, who
lived during these times. Crispin describes the understandable anguish of
Anne’s women, bracing themselves for the duty of carrying her body from the
scaffold for burial. One of Anne Boleyn’s chaplains, Father Thirlwall, blessed
Anne’s makeshift coffin before it was interred in the vault near the altar.
Already in this vault lay the remains of Anne Boleyn’s brother, George (Abbot
2003, p. 43).
They interred
her with the brother she supposedly committed incest with? Why? The more I
thought about that, the more it felt an act of appeasement. Novel fragments opened up in my mind, and I wrote
down in my writing journal:
I
smell the pungency of bruised rosemary, seeing in my mind the dark, candle lit
interior of St. Peter ad Vincula. Out of the gloom, a hooded woman emerges,
closely followed by another. The bowed woman behind her clasps tight to her
chest a bundle of herbs used for burial. Stepping into the amber glow of
candlelight, the first
woman lifts her pale, worn face.
“Mother! Grandmother!” Kate cries,
running into her mother’s open arms. Once there, she weeps. There is no other
sound in the chapel but the echo of her sobs, scarring time itself.
These jottings in my journal, helped
by the erasures of history and my memories of my visit to St. Peter ad Vincula in 2007, led to writing other scenes, or ideas
for this new novel. While I still yearned for a stronger sense of certainty
about Kate’s age before really committing myself to the long, gruelling journey
of novel writing, I knew I was now willing to do the research.
Katherine Carey
presented, I thought, the perfect voice for the Young Adult historical novel I
wanted to write, a vehicle I also hoped, as a writer, would help me reach a
better understanding as to why Henry VIII chose to bloody his hands with the
death of Anne Boleyn through revisiting the last months of her life. But of course it is more than this. My
concerns about Kate Carey’s age at last put to rest through thorough research, The Light in the Labyrinth, also
my PhD artefact, became a story of a young girl forced to grow up fast in the
adult world ruled over by Henry VIII.
The Light in the Labyrinth is now
scheduled for publication in 2014 with Metropolis Ink, the publisher of my
first novel.
P.S. I wrote Before
Dawn Breaks, my ten minute play, in one day and realised I still had time
to enter the 2009 Eltham Little Theatre’s Quickie Competition. Sending it off,
I put it out of my mind and concentrated on other writing. I planned to look at
the play again when I knew the Melbourne Short and Sweet festival was opened
for entries. But fate had other plans –
my play was selected and performed in May that year as one of the ten finalists
of ELT festival. A lovely moment of my
writing life!
References:
Abbott,
G. (2003) Severed
Heads: British Beheadings through the Ages. London, Carlton Publishing
Group.
Cressy, D. (1997). Birth,
marriage, and death: ritual, religion, and the life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart
England. Oxford [Eng.]; New York, Oxford University Press.
Denny, J. (2007). Anne Boleyn: a
new life of England's tragic queen. Cambridge, MA, Da Capo Press.
Dunn, W. J. (2002). Dear Heart,
How Like You This? Yarnell, AZ, Metropolis Ink.
Hutcheon, L. (1989). ‘Historiographic
Metafiction’ https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10252/1/TSpace0167.pdf (accessed 29/07/09).
Ives, E. W. (2004). The life and
death of Anne Boleyn: 'the most happy'. Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub.
Varlow, S. (2007). `Sir Francis
Knollys's Latin dictionary: new evidence for Katherine Carey'. Historical Research 80 (209): 315-323.
