Chapter 45: The Tower of London, March 1541 — Summary and Analysis

Spoiler Notice: This analysis covers Chapter 45 of Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory in full detail, including character fates and narrative revelations. Read on only if you have finished the chapter or welcome comprehensive discussion.

Summary

The chapter opens inside the Tower of London as Katheryn Howard, having spent the night there before her state entry, repeatedly changes her mind about her gown and shoes. Jane, her lady-in-waiting, grows impatient, warning that the king cannot be kept waiting. The mention of the king panics Kitty into hurrying out, wearing the shoes she had called hideous.

Descending the Tower stairs, Jane deliberately avoids looking at Tower Green — the site where her sister-in-law Anne Boleyn and so many others were beheaded. She keeps her eyes fixed on the hem of Kitty’s gown to escape the memory. She also refuses to glance up at windows where Thomas Wyatt, George Boleyn, and other condemned men once gazed out while awaiting death.

Aboard the royal barge, Kitty remarks on the Tower’s gloominess and the sad fate of its prisoners. She broaches the idea of begging the king for mercy — a suggestion planted by Mary Howard, who wants Thomas Wyatt pardoned. Kitty, however, cares less about Wyatt’s fate and more about the spectacle: she wants everyone to see her as a merciful queen in a beautiful tableau.

Jane recalls Katherine of Aragon’s carefully orchestrated mercy plea versus Jane Seymour’s humiliating failure when the king ignored her kneeling form. She warns Kitty that this only works if the king agrees in advance. Thomas Culpeper arranges the moment with Henry, who beams approval. On cue, Jane removes Kitty’s cape and cap, unpins her bronze hair, and strokes it out. Kitty walks to the king, kneels, mimes a prayer, sheds a single theatrical tear, and whispers for mercy for Thomas Wyatt alone — refusing to include Margaret Pole or others, because going on would be “boring” and the audience cannot hear her words anyway. The king raises her, and she kisses his wine-stained lips as the pageant concludes.

Key Events

• Katheryn’s Indecision: Kitty delays the state entry by repeatedly changing her gown and shoes overnight in the Tower, revealing her vanity and anxiety.
• Jane’s Traumatic Walk: Jane avoids looking at Tower Green and the prison windows, haunted by the execution of Anne Boleyn, George Boleyn, and many others she knew personally.
• The Royal Barge Departure: Henry boards with Culpeper and Seymour; the water gate closes behind them, its mechanism rumbling above the dark water.
• Mercy as Performance: Kitty, prompted by Mary Howard, proposes begging mercy for Thomas Wyatt — not out of conviction but because it would be a pretty spectacle.
• Jane’s Warning: Jane recounts the contrasting precedents of Katherine of Aragon’s staged success and Jane Seymour’s humiliating rejection.
• Culpeper’s Role: Thomas Culpeper smoothly arranges the king’s consent, ensuring the performance will succeed.
• The Kneeling Scene: Kitty kneels with her hair down, sheds a single tear, and asks mercy only for Wyatt, explicitly refusing to extend the plea to Margaret Pole or others.
• The King’s Response: Henry raises her and accepts her kiss, completing the masque-like ritual for the watching crowds.

Character Development

Jane Boleyn (Lady Rochford): This chapter exposes the depth of Jane’s unresolved trauma. Her refusal to look at Tower Green is not a passing discomfort but a deliberate, almost physical act of self-preservation. She catalogues the dead — Anne, George, Weston, Norris, Brereton, More, Fisher, Cromwell — and senses their ghosts pressing in. Her recollection of Jane Seymour’s abandoned kneeling form reveals a bitter, intimate knowledge of the king’s cruelty. Jane functions as a walking archive of courtly death, and this chapter shows how she has learned to survive by averting her eyes.

Katheryn Howard: Kitty’s self-absorption reaches a new pitch. The mercy plea is not about justice or compassion; it is about her image. She refuses to ask for Margaret Pole because “I can’t be boring” and dismisses the actual words because “the people won’t hear what I’m saying.” Her single tear is calculated for aesthetic effect, not emotion. Gregory paints her as dangerously naive — treating statecraft as a costume drama while unaware that the Tower’s blood-soaked history could one day claim her, too.

Mary Howard (off-stage influence): Though absent, Mary Howard pulls the strings, using flattery about Wyatt’s poetry describing Anne Boleyn’s beauty to manipulate Kitty’s vanity. She understands exactly how to move the queen to action.

Thomas Culpeper: His easy intimacy with the king and his knowing smile as he arranges the plea signal his growing influence and his complicity in courtly theatre.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Performance and Masque: The chapter’s dominant motif is theatre. Kitty explicitly frames her mercy plea as a masque, with herself cast as Mercy. The river pageant becomes a literal stage, with the king and queen playing scripted roles while Londoners watch. This theme underscores the Tudor court’s fusion of politics and spectacle.

The Tower as a Site of Memory and Death: The Tower looms as a character in itself. The water gate closing “like drowned hair,” the green where grass grows fresh over graves, the windows full of ghosts — Gregory constructs the Tower as a repository of Jane’s traumatic memories. The contrast between the sunny river and the damp, gloomy fortress reinforces the psychological weight Jane carries.

Mercy as Political Currency: Kitty understands mercy not as a moral act but as a transaction that enhances her public image. Jane’s memory of Jane Seymour’s failed plea demonstrates that mercy at court is never spontaneous; it is always negotiated, always conditional on the king’s mood.

Survival Through Avoidance: Jane’s strategy of not looking — at the Green, at the windows, at Margaret Pole’s window — is a coping mechanism. The physical act of averting her eyes mirrors her broader tactic of emotional suppression to survive proximity to the throne.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter crystallises the precariousness of life at Henry’s court through a layered juxtaposition. While Katheryn plays at mercy on a sunlit barge, the imprisoned Margaret Pole — the king’s own elderly cousin — listens to the cannons and trumpets from her cell. Jane’s internal catalogue of the dead reminds readers that nearly everyone she has served has perished violently. The chapter also foreshadows danger: Kitty’s casual dismissal of the Tower’s victims as “sad” and her refusal to extend real mercy betray a shallow understanding of power that places her in peril. Gregory uses this state pageant to expose the rot beneath the spectacle — the casual cruelty, the performative compassion, and the ghosts that Jane cannot outrun.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Jane refuse to look at Tower Green and the prison windows, and what does this reveal about her character? Jane’s refusal is a deliberate act of self-preservation. Tower Green is where Anne Boleyn — her sister-in-law — was beheaded, and the windows held men she knew intimately, including her husband George. Her catalogue of the dead shows she carries an encyclopaedic weight of traumatic memory. Avoiding eye contact with these sites is her method of surviving without confronting the full horror of her losses and her possible complicity in them.

2. How does Katheryn’s mercy plea differ from genuine advocacy, and what does this say about her understanding of queenship? Kitty treats the plea as a “masque” — a staged performance where aesthetics matter more than substance. She refuses to extend mercy to Margaret Pole or others because it would be “boring,” and she relies on the crowd not hearing her actual words. This reveals she sees queenship as a series of beautiful images rather than a position of moral or political responsibility. Her single tear is calculated, not compassionate.

3. What is the significance of Jane recalling Jane Seymour’s failed mercy plea? The memory serves as a warning and a commentary on the king’s arbitrary power. Jane Seymour knelt with her hair down, genuinely begging for the lives of the northern rebels, and Henry left her humiliated on the floor. The contrast with Katherine of Aragon’s pre-approved success illustrates that mercy at Henry’s court is never spontaneous — it is granted only when it serves the king’s image. Jane’s recollection also hints at her own accumulation of bitter knowledge about how this court truly operates.

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