Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (17 page)

Hal shook his head and turned to leave. He
was not haggling price with me. He had rejected the sale.

It took a moment for my mind to register what
my eyes were seeing. Hal was walking toward the door. My beloved
one. My life. I screamed in panic then hugged myself. It had not
been truly final until his back was turned to me.

“Do not
le-eave
. . . ” I moaned,
bending at the waist as if I had been stabbed. I jammed a fist into
my mouth. I was dying. I was going to die.

He looked back at me with his mouth twisted,
and his eyes burning. He started to say something, then stopped and
raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“I cannot be with you!” He bellowed, slamming
his fist against the wall.

I had never heard him shout so. I cowered in
the face of it.

“Dost thou not under
stand
? Canst thou
not see this is the
end
of it? Make the best of this as
I
am trying to do! Why dost thou make this so
difficult
?” He fell against the wall and stood there for a
moment, then pulled himself upright, head lowered.

He appealed to me more softly with tears
streaming down his cheeks.

“I cannot bear this. I did not mean to speak
to thee in this way. I am sorry. I need to go now. I need to . . .
to forget. I need for thee to let me go.”

“Forget . . . ” I echoed in a whisper. My
whole body began to shake, and my teeth to chatter. My eyes
suddenly lost their focus, and I drifted into a kind of stupor. I
looked around me. Hal had chosen the sewing room to tell me. My
half-finished bridal gown was crumpled on the floor where I had
hurled it in my fit, cream-colored wool with love knots of that
lovely blue—Hal’s blue—and shimmering cloth of gold sewn to the
skirt. It swirled through tears.

I thought of the garland of roses. “White,” I
decided in that instant, in a split second of insane denial. “I
shall have white.”

“In a few years we will both think things
were for the best. Meanwhile, I want us to not see each other
again. I could not endure it, nor couldst thou.” Again, he did not
mention that he had been forbidden to ever speak to me and had come
to Hever in secret, and in defiance.

I looked at him stupidly with a slack jaw and
parted lips. I shook my head almost imperceptibly, and hugged
myself to stop the chattering. I could not make out his words.

Hal seemed to waver. He saw tears that needed
wiping, and a shaking girl who required attention and a warm lap.
Bracing himself against these things, he turned away again.

For just a moment, I seemed to lose my mind
from pain and shock. I saw Hal’s back and felt a scream welling up
inside me. How could he have allowed this to happen to us? Why had
he done nothing to stop it? How could he leave me so? He could not
do so, if he had truly loved me. Did he not love me? Surely he must
not! The agony of this truth erupted within me.

“May God
damn
thee to eternal Hell,
Henry Percy!” I shrieked. I had never called him Henry. I wanted
God to make no mistakes when He gathered up the damned and pitched
them into Hell. “May Satan take thy miserable soul! Wilt thou never
have a backbone? Be a man, sirrah, and be thou brave instead! Must
thou ruin both our lives with thy sniveling cowardice? Is the fear
of reprisal so much greater than the love? If so, I was deceived,
and
hate
thee for it!”

My eyes were wild with fury and contempt. My
hair was a clawed, disheveled mess. I could not take back the words
once spoken, but in a sense they alone were giving me some peace.
They were a wedge that was making it possible for him to leave, and
for me to let him go.

Hal winced and sent me a look of betrayal and
of hurt. Then, with sudden self-possession, he gave a small droll
smile and called over his shoulder, “My dearest love, my bravery
surely knows no bounds, for I am standing up to
thee
. I
wouldst that thou were only Satan and his armies, for I fear facing
them less than I feared coming to thee this night.”

Then he stopped and looked back at me with
sad and tired eyes. “I do love thee, Anne . . . ” He said it again
softly as if to himself: “I do love thee. I cannot stop it.” Then,
almost shyly, in obvious discomfort, Hal said, “I could not bear
it, were thou to love another.”

“I can never love another,” I answered
softly. “Thou knowest my heart. I vow to thee, I never shall.”

We exchanged small smiles, then wiped our
eyes.

In a stronger voice Hal made the simplest of
apologies. “I am sorry,” he said with the corners of his mouth
twisted down and tears welling up in his eyes.

He stood and waited for me to respond, or for
something to occur that would allow him to leave me.

“I wish thee happiness, Hal,” I choked
through tears. I gave him that. He deserved that. I stood and
looked at him, still chewing my knuckles, still hugging myself with
one arm.

Hal nodded and left for a roadhouse for the
night rather than prolong the parting by remaining at Hever. We
would not speak again except in the most formal of circumstances,
and then only briefly. In time my heart would hardly break at all
at the sight of him. For the duration of my life, we would both be
careful to ensure our eyes never met.

•
~
۞
~•

Hal’s marriage, as expected, would be
miserable and loveless. His wife did not understand, as most people
did, that Hal was to be gently kept, so she bullied and criticized
and publicly humiliated him. In a short time his spirit began to
buckle. He could not endure confrontation or discord, and was
living in the midst of it with no hope of escape. He faded into a
quiet state of wasted years, nursing very real stomach ailments and
complaining of other, imagined disorders of the body which then
were manifested into real illness, with ready assistance from
excessive drink. His health would decline sharply, and he would die
young, just months after I would die.

Until then, his humor grew more caustic, and
his view of the world grew less naive and less forgiving. He
developed a talent for biting sarcasm he was hitherto unknown to
have. His tongue became cruelly sharp with unkind wit, and the butt
of his humor was marriage. He developed a deep long-lasting
distaste for the institution, and will retain his strong feelings
toward it, even when we next meet.

Our problems are not over in our having paid
our debts this life. I will greatly fear marriage and he will
deeply hate it when we meet again. Our challenge will be to love so
well that we can overcome this and continue the business we started
together.

In the years subsequent to the end of our
courtship, Hal followed my progress closely, devoting long
stretches of time to self-pity when I fell in love with Henry. He
had somehow counted upon me to ward off the King—and every other
man—forever, and was the only one not surprised that I held out as
long as I did when Henry first pursued me. He drank for two days
when word reached him that Henry and I had finally consummated our
relationship, and drank for another two when word of my pregnancy
was made public.

He did not drink on the day of my execution.
He simply sat in the dark and stared. His thoughts revolved around
my final accusations before he left me, and of how our lives would
be had he acted differently.

He blamed himself for my death, overlooking
that he had left me to prevent his parents from taking steps to
bankrupt and ruin my family under clandestine pressure from the
King. The plan had to do with the wording of a contract my father
had once signed, that Henry was going to produce if I continued to
see Hal. Hal’s father served the King and felt he had no choice. He
would be the one to enforce the damaging clause. If he disobeyed,
or if I were found in Hal’s bed, the King would retaliate.

Hal was publicly told only that he would be
disinherited if he married me, but the real threat had been
described to him in private, and he had followed his conscience by
leaving me. His fear was not of his father’s anger toward himself,
but of the damage he could bring to me and to everyone in both
families. He saw abandoning me as an act of love and indeed, it
truly was.

When Henry began calling shortly afterward,
my feelings toward him, not even knowing the full extent of his
meddling, were murderous. He was offering himself to me after
killing everything that mattered in my heart. His attentions came
about so soon afterward that I could not help but understand the
reason approval of my marriage was denied. He was expecting me to
be grateful, and was bewildered by my coldness and refusal to
accept him.

“Manipulative,” the others said of me.

It matters not what any of them said. It
matters not.

Publicly, it was announced that I was now
being sent away from court for my rash behavior. My fury at this
statement could not be measured, for in addition to the injury, I
was to be further shamed before the court and held up to it as a
fool.

In truth, I had gone to Queen Katherine when
I was able. I had been stunned and hysterical for days, bedridden
for the most part, and spoon-fed by servants I mostly waved away. I
finally roused myself from my weeping long enough to request of her
more time to weep and stare and stay in bed. I reported to
Katherine and begged her leave for an undetermined period of
time.

“A personal matter,” I explained. The queen
knew what that matter was, as did everyone at court, and in her
eyes was a glimmer of compassion I would see little of,
elsewhere.

Disgrace, like ill-fortune, carries with it a
stench, and elicits more self-satisfied, triumphant glee than
empathy. Of all the persons I knew from court, Katherine was the
one who offered me empathy.

That one look from Katherine, and my
heartfelt gratitude, cost Henry eight years of courtship to win me.
I had Katherine’s permission to stay away as long as necessary, and
was henceforth indebted to her for her kindness.

Queen Katherine’s eyes had followed Hal and
me on many occasions, misty, pleased and nostalgic.

“Love makes Mistress Anne very pretty,” she
had once said in proprietary fashion. She had occasionally smiled
in our direction, and had remarked in flattering terms about the
other to each of us. We pleased her, yet she was aware of our
bloodlines and their disparity.

She was not behind this, nor was she in
concurrence with the decision. The queen had not influenced the
King to nullify our betrothal, even with my sister only recently
tossed from Henry’s bed. I knew this then, and now.

Henry walked in as I was leaving Katherine’s
sitting room, and accepted my stiff curtsey with a slight twitch
around his lips. He watched me leave. He could not know what
fearsome invectives I was silently flinging toward him, nor did it
occur to him that I might be angered, or that my pain and Hal’s
might be more than a superficial, passing disappointment. He
presumed I had agreed to marry solely in order to better myself,
and was pleased with himself for having found a way to proffer a
far better bargain, he thought, than Hal. He did not agonize over
the ethical points inherent in his actions, having rationalized
them away. His path was clear, and that was all that mattered. He
would arrive at Hever on Tuesday fortnight, and would summon
me.

The mystery is not why I waited so long to
welcome Henry’s advances. The mystery is how I ever came to welcome
them at all. I have no answer except to explain that the love was
already there, dormant and waiting, and had been there since beyond
memory.

I also never fully knew in life what Henry
had done to Hal and to me.

Henry could have waited one lifetime more. He
should have left me with Hal and stayed with his wife. I most
bitterly reflect upon this at times.

But at such times I venture into nonsense.
Had I not suffered then, it would have been later. Now that debt is
paid and that lesson is learned, and it is behind me.

And with my Elizabeth, Britain got a fine
strong queen.

Life most assuredly goes on.

•
~
۞
~•

I was alone, abed, when word came. It was
well past noon, and I had not yet risen, nor had I any intention of
rising. I was lost in my thoughts, and lacked any interest in
diversions or healthy pursuits. I fully intended to grow old and to
die in my bed, and rarely left it. So, settled in and waiting as I
was for the end of my life, I found the interruption and the
information relayed to me both jarring and unwelcome.

A servant hurried into the room and advised
me that the King would be calling in two days. Mother had ordered
her to help me select a suitable gown for the occasion, she said,
and even as she spoke of this, she was already poking through the
garments in the wardrobe while I angrily sat up and watched
her.

“There is no need,” I snapped. “I will not be
coming down. Go.”

“Your lady mother doth insist,” she answered,
hesitating. Deciding to obey my mother rather than me, she turned
back to the gowns. Another servant swept in to assist her and the
two of them discussed between themselves which gown was most
becoming, and which headpiece should be worn with it. A third
servant ran to my bedside and began, against my will and with harsh
objections flung at her, to pull my nightgown over my head. I
twisted to get away and hurled myself face down upon the bed.

“I will have thee flogged!” I shouted,
bursting into tears, pounding my fists.

Mother walked in upon the scene and coldly
ordered me to behave.