Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (33 page)

I was too consumed to notice that I was
pecking upon my underlings like a chicken in a barnyard. That was
dangerous enough. More dangerous was the way in which I turned my
fear onto Henry by counting the minutes he spent with me, or the
seconds his eyes followed a woman as she passed. I could not stop
myself from commenting, in part to solicit his reassurances. As
time passed, his reassurances came less often, and my comments grew
more reproachful and more frequent. I could not be reassured. He in
turn felt less inclined to reassure me.

He was set upon having a son. He forgot his
irritations at night and still came to me, but he was more
determined than he had been in the past. He came to me with
concentrated intent, and obvious purpose. In response to this, I
stiffened in fear, knowing now why Katherine had prayed aloud
during their lovemaking, and wanting to do the same. Henry sensed
the change in me, and answered my daytime reproaches with his own
at night: he performed the act then left the room without a word,
and went to sleep elsewhere.

I lay awake long afterward and stared.

I began having dreams about France. I thought
I had placed it behind me, but still I had vivid dreams about being
cornered in the corridor, and pulled into an empty room by my
attacker. The dreams always placed us in a church for some reason
and, in these dreams, he was dressed in a long black cape, a large,
pale, flaccid, thick-lipped man with narrowed eyes that darted
about in search of me. I grew small in the dreams, even smaller
than I had been in life when he first took me. I would run and hide
beneath a church pew where he would always find me, and I would
scream myself awake. So unsafe was I in the dream, I could not even
find shelter in the house of God.

In place of insatiable passion, I now had no
desire for Henry at all. In fact, I quite recoiled from him.

I tried not to let him see this, for I needed
to become pregnant again. Yet I feared becoming pregnant, for I
might give birth to another female. He had married me solely so
that I might give him a son, and I had already failed in this. To
do so again was unthinkable, and yet I had no control over this
kind of failure, past or future. I needed somehow to gain control,
but could not. Was it preferable to not be pregnant, or to present
him with another daughter? I had no answer to that and felt as if I
was choosing between death from a sword and death from poison. I
would in the end, of course, leave it up to God, the very God who
had already betrayed me.

My passion would have returned when my body
went back to normal, had I not been so plagued. I loved Henry
deeply. However, I was frightened after Elizabeth was born. I had
no one to tell, and nowhere to run. The fears had taken hold of me
and had spawned bad dreams that came with greater frequency until I
was again a girl, feeling all the terror of being forced.

I now could not stomach our lovemaking. Too
much was tied to it. It nearly made me ill.

It was in this that my attacker lay the
groundwork for my sentence of death. He wounded my mind as much as
my body, and it was only the bodily wounds that healed. The scars
inside my head were larger than the faint one on my neck, and they
resurfaced when I faced the strain of having had a daughter rather
than a son. Deep inside me, repressed for years by my determination
to move past it, that man still waited for me with his knife at my
throat. When Henry touched me, I saw that man and remembered, and
relived, and felt the same revulsion again.

Why, after so many years? Why was it stronger
in these years than it had been earlier on? I did not understand.
It made no sense to me. It would make even less sense to Henry, who
wanted only that I get on with it and return to being the way I
once was. He did not want to discuss rapes he did not believe had
really taken place, or examine the effects those rapes had had on
me.

Henry would send me away for this. He would
send me away and replace me with someone else. I knew it. The
thought of it caused me even greater anxiety. Worry quelled my
desire even further.

Henry could not help but dwell on what might
be causing my lack of passion toward him. He was in constant fear
that he could not perform like other men. He had gotten so from
Katherine’s coldness. Now he had a second wife who seemed to find
him as unappealing as the first had.

He began to “confess” to his advisors that he
could not perform the marital act because I had bewitched him and
rendered him impotent. Henry had difficulty performing the love act
when he did not feel he was desired, so in a sense his words held
truth. I was, in fact, the source of his impotence. He did not
explain in full, however, when he made this accusation. So ashamed
was he that he preferred being viewed as a man who could not bed
his wife, rather than admit that his wife would not have him.

Had I done anything but shy away from his
advances, I might have lived. Had I merely had a succession of
daughters or miscarriages, I would have been divorced instead. My
death was a punishment for frigidity more than for any other
thing.

It tore at Henry’s heart.

He was a very proud man.

“Wouldst thou deign to have me?” he coolly
asked me one night from just inside the doorway as I lay propped
among the cushions. I had complained of head pains or monthly
cramps for days. For a week prior to that I had used other excuses.
I was pushing him into the arms of his mistress, and I knew this
and was frantic with jealousy and fear, but I could not change how
I felt about his coming to me.

No, I thought. Please no.

“As you do wish, my lord,” I had answered,
with no expression.

“I care little either way,” he snapped at me.
His eyes were wounded. “Soon, I shall not care at all.”

My feelings instantly warmed toward him when
I saw his eyes. I did not ever want to wound him and felt a rush of
love, and shame, and regret.

“Henry,” I had said holding out my arms.
“Come to me.” I felt deep remorse toward him. I did not even
remotely deserve him. Why was I doing this to him? I must stop. I
could push aside my distaste once and for all if I willed it
strongly enough. It was a weakness I had to overcome.

This was my husband. This was my life’s
greatest love. He had done so much for me, and I should not bring
such grief to him. I kept my arms outstretched, while he thought
for a moment.

“I would not keep thee from thy rest,” he
said with narrowed eyes and a tinge of sarcasm.

I read accurately that he was hurt and in
fear of rejection.

“Come to me,” I said softly. I leaned forward
toward him, stretching my arms. “Please.”

Henry hesitated, then softened and casually
walked over to me as if he were doing so by coincidence rather than
design. He sat at the edge of my bed and looked at me with an
expression of indifferent disdain.

Then his face crumpled and he buried it in my
lap. He began to shake, and to twist at my gown with his fists like
a small boy. I heard a muffled sob.

“Sshhh, my sweetest,” I whispered. “I do so
love thee.”

“Dost thou?” He asked looking up.

“With all my heart and my soul,” I answered.
“Nothing will ever change that, Rex.” I stroked his hair.

“Thou hast become cold to me.” He said it
accusingly, plaintively, like a child.

How do you explain fears and dreams and
wounds to a man? He would scoff and tell me to simply not heed
them. I had tried not heeding them, and yet they haunted me still.
He would scorn me for that, and think they were an excuse rather
than a reason, or that I was weak, or looking for attention.

“I have dreams . . . That is all. They make
me fearful.”

“Of me? How couldst thou ever fear me? I
could never harm thee.”

That statement gave me faith that perhaps all
was not as hopeless as I thought. Perhaps he was not planning to
wound me after all, by discarding me for someone else and, perhaps
his love for me had not changed. With this small reassurance, I
felt safer. All I really needed was to feel safe, and not feeling
so was the cause of all that plagued me.

I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him
and felt the passion stir within me again.

“I do not fear thee. I have bad dreams that
taint my thoughts. They haunt me.” I slipped my hand down to
unloosen his codpiece and began to breathe more heavily. I nuzzled
his ear and grew limp when he reached for me. “I will try harder
not to have them,” I whispered.

“What kind of dreams?” Henry asked
distractedly. He sighed when I reached inside and found him. He did
not await an answer. “Oh Anna,” he whispered. “Oh my love.”

He came again the next night and the next,
and stayed, and for that short time our passion was as it had been
in the beginning. I did so love the man. I did so love him. If I
could only purge myself of demons . . .

Then I had another dream. In this one I was
raped again, and gave birth to a hideously monstrous child. It had
the face of the man who had taken me in France, and claws instead
of hands. It was handed to me and I held it, then it reached out
its claws and cut my neck. I screamed.

I screamed myself awake, and sat up in bed
hysterical. Yet I was not quite awake. I was a child again and back
in France. When Henry sat up in bed and grabbed hold of me to calm
me, I struck him and screamed louder, for the dream continued and,
in it, my attacker had come back for me.

“Anna—please. Thou hast had a bad dream!”

I wrestled away from him and stood up,
clutching my nightgown at the chest with my fist.

“Touch me and I will kill you,” I hissed in
French, and was suddenly entirely awake.

I blinked, disoriented. “Rex?” I asked. I
wondered why I was standing so.

“Thou hast had a bad dream,” Henry repeated,
more calmly. He let silence fall for a moment. It was not a
comfortable silence. Then he spoke.

“Thou didst just say to me that thou wouldst
kill me, were I to touch thee.” His voice was strained beneath the
calm.

I stared at him, and slowly shook my head. I
could not see to read his expression, but his eyes shone in the
moon’s reflection. They did not blink.

“Wouldst thou
indeed
kill me were I to
touch thee? Wouldst thou in
deed
?” His voice had taken the
slippery tones he used when confronting someone who had defied him,
someone he could crush. His tone of voice rose and fell unnaturally
along a musical scale. There was a studied cheerfulness to the
words, and a conscious effort to carefully enunciate each one that
I recognized as ominous. He had never once before directed that
tone toward me.

My words even in sleep, we both knew, were
treasonous.

“I was speaking to
him
.” I was
shivering and my voice shook. “I was not speaking to thee—if in
fact I spoke at all! I remember not, except for having said that in
my dream.”

“To whom didst thou speak, if not to me?” He
looked around himself dramatically, and waved his hand. “I see no
one else.”

“The man who forced himself on me when I was
young.”

“Was that thy dream just now?” His voice
still carried the ominous inflections, softly encouraging the
cornered animal to move closer and allow Henry to strike. He
thought I lied about the rapes, and thus was lying when I said I
dreamed them. He believed, much as the women in the French court
had believed, that rape was merely seduction and a weakness of the
victim. He did not accept my stories as truth and viewed them as an
insult to his good nature and his intelligence. Knowing this, I had
stopped speaking of the topic very early on.

“Aye. It was most . . . horrifying. It was
not you to whom I spoke, Your Grace. I beg your forgiveness for
having spoken out of turn.” I had not phrased my words so formally
for several years when addressing him in private, but his voice
demanded it. “I am most humbly sorry.”

He still stared. “Come back to bed,” he
ordered. His voice had not warmed toward me.

“Yes my lord,” I said. Feeling both terror
and embarrassment, I slipped into bed. I pulled myself into the
fetal position with my back to Henry, and when he edged closer to
me, I pulled away. He tried again, and again I moved from him. I
just could not be touched, even knowing how unwise it was to spurn
him.

Henry lay there and thought for a moment,
then rose and left me to spend the rest of the night elsewhere.

“Do not leave me, Rex. Please—” I whispered
to him as he stood. He continued toward the door as if he had not
heard.

He did not return the following night.

•
~
۞
~•

I visited Elizabeth on occasion. In the
beginning, I explained that holding her and being near to her
somehow had the effect of causing my breasts to become engorged. I
would sacrifice my visits in order to hasten the drying of my milk,
I said, and so saw her very rarely for weeks. When my milk finally
dried, I ventured in to visit her.

She had not grown more beautiful with time,
nor had she grown to be more male. I held her and waited to love
her. I did not love her with that visit, nor with the next one or
the next, so I concentrated instead on the details of her
existence, speaking to the nurses about her feedings and the
schedule she kept.

It was all the concern I could offer her.

In return, she did not cling to me or need
me. The focus of her adoration was the wet nurse, not her mother.
When she cried, I could not comfort her at all, and had to turn her
over to Sarah, who would hold her to her breast and let her suckle
while I watched.

I knew nothing of infants at all, and did not
feel myself fit to be a mother. The women entrusted with Elizabeth
seemed so much more adept than I in making her happy and keeping
her well. I felt a sinking sensation each time I paid a visit, for
I was neither loved nor needed by my child. This was, in fact, the
way I was raised, and what I had been taught was proper, but
something inside of me suggested that perhaps Sarah’s role was the
one to be envied. I resolved to earn back the love it is a mother’s
right to know, and yet each day I found reasons not to go to my
daughter. Petty reasons.