Ann had watched and listened and waited, on tiptoe holding her breath, gauging each word and each action until at last she no longer cared what people thought. For a time she savaged her enemies with impunity, pushing Henry farther and farther—would he go so far as to execute his first wife for her?—enjoying that power all the more for knowing it could be snatched away at any moment. I miscarried of my savior. So did I challenge fate, and lose.
The young musician set aside his lute and began to sing. It was “Greensleeves”, of course, which according to legend Henry wrote for Ann, although there was not one jot of historiography to support that contention. His eyes were focused on Virginia, and his vibrant voice made her shoulder blades tingle. . . . What the hell? some vestige of her former self protested, but the woman she was now mouthed the words with him: “. . . delighting in your company . . .”
He segued into “The Death of Queen Jane”. Henry had announced his betrothal to Jane while Ann’s body was still bleeding. Jane had given him the son he craved and then obligingly died before he had a chance to get tired of her. But then, she was a historical lacuna, with no discernible personality—the perfect woman, Virginia supposed.
Pickering gestured abruptly at the serving wench—so it wasn’t time for the after-dinner drinks, he wanted his now. And suddenly Virginia saw truculent Henry, frightened witless. Frightened? Yes. That someday he would lose the respect of his court and his people. That someday he would make a mistake. He was a king. He wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. When he did, he had no choice but to make other people pay for them.
“A rosebud in June,” sang the young man, conjuring up images of couples rolling moistly (in more ways than one) across an English greensward.
Dinner was over. They were going back into the other room. Somewhere between buzzed and blitzed, Virginia followed. Usually at this point in a conference she’d slink off to her room to nurse her grievances. Tonight, wonder of wonders, she had no grievances. The world was a bright and pleasant place. She wondered why she’d never noticed that before.
In the doorway stood the singer/musician, offering her a silver salver piled with candy. “Would you care for a Godiva chocolate truffle?”
“What’s your name?” she asked, her hand hovering between the plate and the half-open placket of his shirt. He exuded a spicy aroma, like the wine.
“Owen Harper.”
“Do you do this for a living?”
“Not a bit of it. I’m a graduate student in Elizabethan politics at Cambridge. This is what I do for the ready.” His dark eyes met hers and sparkled. “Have a sweet, lass.”
Not “madam” but “lass”. A few days ago she’d have been insulted. Now she took a morsel of candy, lifted it to her lips and bit.
Her mouth filled with sweet dark warm chocolate (like Owen’s eyes, and Ann’s). Her throat opened. Her stomach softened. Savoring every molecule she at last ran her tongue between her lips and smiled up at his enthralled face. “I didn’t think I liked chocolate,” she murmured confidingly. “I guess I never had any good chocolate before.”
He grinned. “We aim to please.”
She took another piece and nibbled at it while she watched his lithe body move across the room. He’s no competitor, is he? And if my purse outweighs his, then my advantage cancels out that of his sex.
Time, Virginia thought, had already cancelled out a lot of the advantage of his sex. With wide smile and glittering eye, she schmoozed her way through the group, making as many word-plays as serious comments on historical minutiae, asking Rossiter’s advice on her upcoming paper, complimenting Pickering’s tie (printed with the posturing macho figures of the Bayeux Tapestry) and then reminding him gently that she was ripe for a full professorship.
When she got back to her room it was late, and she was much too tired to get out the neat stack of pages that was her paper, let alone analyze just what had happened to the cool and orderly habits of her mind. She was losing her head, it seemed. . . .
Her laughter was every bit as hysterical as Ann’s. And yet hers signaled not a prison door closing but one opening.
* * * * *
In the June sunlight the gardens of Hever Castle made a sight calculated to gladden the heart and sharpen the pen of any romantic poet. Virginia was no romantic poet. If she had been—or if she’d paid her good money for, say, John Keats—she’d be dashing off a ditty about storm clouds and lightning.
Muttering to herself, she plumped down on a bench and examined her options.
She’d made a real exhibition of herself last night. Compromised her principles. She’d blame drunkenness except she knew damn well she hadn’t had that much to drink. She’d blame Ann, except she’d asked for Ann.
How facile to claim principle when vanity is truly at stake.
Vanity?
Is not clutching one’s preconception to one’s heart a form of vanity? Could not compromise be itself a higher form of principle?
Well, yeah. Was it really conceding her feminist credentials to have listened to everyone else’s point of view at the banquet—even Arnold Pickering and his stupid sexist jokes. If he didn’t realize the only reason everyone laughed at his jokes was because of his position he was a fool. If he did realize it, then he was pathetic.
Is it better to be a woman, trapped by the limits of power, or a man, goaded into madness by its demands?
Even if that question had had an answer, Virginia’s answer wouldn’t have been the same as Ann’s. But Virginia couldn’t blame Ann for being a product of her times. She shouldn’t feel guilty for being a product of her own. If she worked it right, she could have her principles and eat them too.
Across the way, in the garden gate, a young couple were arguing with each other. She gestured abruptly. He gestured broadly. Virginia wondered what the issue was.
Yesterday she’d have said the issue was that half the couple was male. Today she wasn’t so sure. Today the issue for her was what to do about her paper.
She’d managed to drop enough hints last night that tonight she’d probably have everyone hanging on her every word instead of greeting her with garlic and crucifixes. She needed to take advantage of that interest, and she had the queasy feeling that going with the original fire and brimstone polemic wasn’t going to do it. Would it be cowardice to tone down the rhetoric?
Not when the rhetoric was in defense of a position she now knew to be untenable, that Ann had been an innocent victim, acted upon but never acting.
I confessed my sins before God, should I be loath to confess them before man? And woman as well? An instructive tale, I should think.
Yeah right. Virginia was going to stand up before the group and say, “Fellow scholars, let me introduce Ann Boleyn, erstwhile queen of England.”
No. That was one secret she intended to keep. But every historian knew the whys and wherefores of “allegedly” and “it might be” and “it is thought that.” Historical truth was slippery at best, and even now Virginia (Ann in tow) was operating within a cultural context. Why not turn today’s post-modernist cultural context to her advantage, and emphasize Ann’s ambiguities rather than her victimhood?
The woman in the gate shoved at the man’s chest and stalked off around the corner. Crushed, he sagged against the brickwork.
“She kicked him in the nuts, right enough,” said a mellow voice in Virginia’s ear.
She looked up. Owen was standing over her, offering her a red rose. Torn from a nearby bush, she figured, but what the heck. She took it. “Thanks. Just tell me one thing. Why do men so often use that particular physical context in their metaphors?”
“If you had nuts, that wouldn’t need asking. Do you mind?” Without waiting for her reply, he sat down beside her.
She couldn’t help but appreciate how his snug jeans set off the objects under consideration. . . . Again she blushed, redder than the rose. Dammit, she’d never gone around blushing before.
Not enough blood, I warrant.
Owen
was looking down at his thumb. A drop of blood looked like a tiny ruby on its tip. Shrugging, he thrust the thumb in his mouth and glanced over at her, a gesture that was anything but childish.
“Katherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife,” she told him, “was billed as ‘the rose without a thorn’.”
“Until she pricked him. Poor old begger, convincing himself he’d finally found a sweet young thing who loved him for his own gross self and then he learns she’s having it off with the young stallions amongst the courtiers.”
Henry’s illusions were as great as his temper, and in as great a need of cosseting.
Virginia shook her head. She should’ve come back with some retort about Katherine merely expressing her sexuality and yet. . . . In another minute she’d be feeling sympathy for Henry. Talk about ideological whiplash.
She gazed at Owen, her interest level fast unapproaching lustful. Last night his beard and earring had been nice period touches. Today, with the boots, the jeans, and the leather jacket, they looked stylishly contemporary. Smart. But then, that word applied to mental faculties, too.
He inspected his thumb, found it acceptable, reached over and took her hand. His musician’s fingers traced subtle little patterns across the palm. His dark eyes gleamed. “I see by the conference schedule you’re giving a paper tonight. What’s your subject, then?”
“My subject,” she said, “is Ann Boleyn. Who was neither saint nor sinner but like most of us a mixture of both.”
* * * * *
Spending the afternoon tearing the guts out of her paper and re-writing it had been well worth the effort, even if the keyboard of Virginia’s laptop had been hot to the touch by the time she was done.
Now every face in the room was turned up to her, faces she needed to woo and to win. And, what was surprising, faces she now knew how to woo and to win. Including Owen Harper’s. He’d slipped into the back of room right after she’d started her presentation. Already in his period costume for the evening’s festivities, he looked like an amiable ghost, smiling encouragement. Except the ghost was in her own mind, offering her own encouragement.
Virginia was closing in on the home stretch. “And so the people in the streets, especially the women, hurled abuse at Ann as she passed. And no wonder. If the king could put aside his first wife for failing to bear a son, what about the shopkeepers and the blacksmiths? Yes, the wife had a long list of obligations to her husband, but the husband had obligations to his wife as well.”
The door opened. Goneril Pickering walked in and sat down beside her husband. She’d probably missed last night’s banquet because she was singing Brunhilde somewhere. Arnold deflated. His eyes darted right and left.
“In her days at the French court Ann heard of and met many powerful women—Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, to name only two. But no woman was strong in own right. She had to ally herself with a man to be powerful. Going to court, attracting the eye of a powerful man, was the only career open to a woman. For once a woman was powerful, then she would—probably—be safe.”
Elise Rossiter nodded. Today she was dressed in black, trying to appear more slender, maybe, but actually looking like a crow. Virginia resolved to give her one of the silk scarves Ann had chosen at Harrod’s.
“Ann saw her own sister Mary used and discarded by the king. She didn’t want to follow that path. But Henry’s game was the only one in town. Once Ann realized she was trapped, her maidenhood forfeit, perhaps she resolved to bargain it away for as high a price as possible. If she’d borne a son, she’d have been set for life. But she didn’t. When did the tantrums she used to manipulate Henry become genuine outbursts of fear and frustration?”
Edmund Gooch was hanging on every word. At least Virginia hoped he was hanging on her words, and not on the light coating of makeup and heather-colored tweed jacket.
“But if Ann was frightened and frustrated, how much more was Henry? He’d mortgaged not only his soul but that of England for a son, and failed. That magnificent codpiece, and yet he had no legitimate son when his glorious ancestors had so many sons they battled each other for the throne. Fear makes people self-centered and cruel. Like Henry. Like Ann.”
Virginia remembered Thomas Boleyn, jostling for power and position and dying a broken man. She remembered Richard Follansbee, dying of a perforated ulcer after years of jockeying for position and power. She remembered Henry Tudor. He’d been trapped, too, between the codpiece and the crown, two symbols of power, and the fates (women, in Greek mythology) who seemed determined to take it away from him.
“Catherine of Aragon held out for respect and dignity and died a lingering death of a broken heart. Did Ann, perhaps, engineer herself a quicker death by throwing herself into the embraces of Henry’s courtiers? Was she making one last cut of the cards to get herself a strong son? Was it simply one last spasm of a rebellious nature she’d never been able to express? Or was it one last desperate grab for the pleasure her sensual nature demanded, but her culture denied her? At her trial, her aggressiveness was used as a sign of her wickedness.”
Arnold hadn’t blinked for the last three paragraphs. Goneril inspected her fingernails. In the back of the room Owen’s eyes flared.
“Norris, Brereton, Smeaton, Weston. They had their choices. And they chose to be as dazzled by Ann, by her vitality with its acid edge, as she’d been dazzled by Henry. As we choose today to be dazzled by her. Thank you.”
Virginia had expected a polite smattering of applause, but the clapping was actually enthusiastic. Propelled forward by Goneril, Arnold Pickering scuttled toward her. “Virginia, my dear, we must have a very serious talk. Are you coming to the reception?”
“Of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”
Glancing over his shoulder—Goneril was smiling, every tooth gleaming—he went on, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Virginia, but I’d just about written off any possibility of your coming to us at Northeastern. I mean, we have several of those man-hating bra-burners already.”
“Pesky bunch, aren’t they?” she returned. “Give me just a minute, would you please?”
Pickering turned, was pinioned by his wife, and carried away.
Virginia starting stacking her pages. Yeah, money was power. Daddy’s money was power, which had backfired for Ann but worked beautifully for Virginia. And where to go from here? Women’s shelters, pre-natal programs, scholarships. Odd, how she had so little interest in womanning the barricades any more. She was now much more interested in tearing them down.
Everyone had left the room except Owen. He sketched an elegant bow. “Brava! Well done!”
“Needs some more work, but thank you.” Also odd, how she’d thought she didn’t like men. Maybe she’d just never met a man before.
There are always men. It is the woman who throws the dice.
Virginia smiled. “I need to get over to the reception—drinks, snacks, acclamation, job offers. When do you get off work?”
“Elevenish. There’s some lovely champagne in the store room. If I pinched a bottle, do you think you’d still have space for it?”
Ah sirrah, what quantity of my space do you intend to fill. . . . “Can you get some of those chocolate truffles, too?” asked Virginia, a little louder than was necessary.
Owen took her hand and raised it to his lips. His warm breath tickled her knuckles. “Whatever my lady wishes. Anon.”
She wishes to explore her own ambiguities, Virginia said silently to his retreating back. And the resonance in her mind murmured, O brave new world, that has such joys in it.
Reminding herself to send Wilhelm Wolfe a thank you note and a box of chocolates—and a dozen roses, thorns and all, for Chimera—Virginia walked on toward her destiny.
Author’s Note
“A Rose with All Its Thorns” first appeared in Past Lives, Present Tense, edited by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Ace, Berkley Publishing Group, 1999.
Who can resist the dash and drama of Tudor history? I sure can’t. I was asked t
o write a story for this anthology soon after I’d read yet one more book about the six wives of Henry VIII. This one, I was bemused to find, was written from a feminist point of view so strident I wondered a time or two whether it was meant satirically. But then, I was born and raised in an academic environment, and I know that the machinations of Academia resemble those of your average Tudor court.
I’d also just seen Shakespeare in Love. Feel free to imagine Joseph Fiennes playing Owen Harper. My favorite theatrical Ann is Charlotte Rampling’s rather fey interpretation, in a film version of the 70s PBS program, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, with the same actor playing Henry but more popularly known actresses playing the wives.
I’ve visited Hever Castle, although unlike Virginia, I did take my time genuflecting before its collection of one-of-a-kind historical items. No one invited us to stay for the period banquet, I’m afraid.
Most, but not all, historians agree that Ann was innocent of all charges.
A Dish of Poison
When Viola caught a glimpse of herself in the tall mirrors lining the drawing room she had to look twice. That slender youth in the blue and gold uniform of the Duke’ household was truly her.
She squared her shoulders and lengthened her stride toward the far end of the room. Duke Orsino stood there, the focus of his retainers as a planet was the focus of its moons.
Unlike some of the tasks that had already fallen her way in the Duke’s employ, those involving tobacco, guns, or dice, waiting upon Orsino was effortless. Viola could have stood all day at his elbow, feasting her eyes on his profile, clean as that on a Roman coin, or listening to his firm but melodious voice.
The gold braid on his collar set off his tanned complexion. His crisp black hair was cut short in the new fashion that rejected the elaborate powdered wigs of an earlier generation. When his guest Captain Bassanio bowed deeply, Orsino inclined his head in a nod so gracious, so polite, it was hard for Viola to envision him leading his ships into the fire and storm of battle. Warriors of old, though, were known for their courtesy as well as for their prowess on the battlefield.
The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth Page 10