"Elizabeth, for your mother." She hoped the error of granting a girl would be glossed over by pride in his lineage.
"A noble name." He smiled and rubbed his broad forehead against the infant's. "And fitting. My mother was the fairest woman to ever grace this court. You will be the second," he said to the child as he placed her at Anne's breast.
"And though the child be a girl, I'm satisfied, for with one living child, surely will come another. And another, ’til the son."
Anne shifted so the warmth of Elizabeth's body lay snug in the crook of her arm.
"I worry for her welfare. As you said, your child by Catherine still lives, and many in the realm will not rejoice at our good fortune." She poked her finger in the infant's mouth, surprised at the strength of the suction. Only a few precious hours ’til the wet nurse took her. She wanted to fill her soul with these memories, for she would soon have to abandon the babe to conceive the son.
"Do not concern yourself, no one would dare harm my child." He touched Elizabeth on the head tenderly.
"But we will have her wet nurse’s food and drink tested for poison, will that settle your worries?"
She nodded, giving a large yawn for answer and let her eyes close thankfully. She heard him tiptoe to the door, his cloak rustling faintly, the brief rush of well-worn velvet and ambergris dissipated with the faint click of the closing door.
George couldn’t have been more relieved. Henry beamed over his new child and told everyone what a wonderful choice he had made in wives.
"She is a woman above all women. I’d not give her up, if the Lord himself declared I must." Henry sat with pen in hand before his privy chamber. Marc Smeaton strummed each chord Henry ordered, while George and Francis and Hal Norris watched the King scribble that note down after.
"It’s good to know you love her so true," George dared.
"I love her truer than that, for she’s the most exciting woman I have ever met." For some reason, George had a hard time meeting his eye. He kept remembering Henry’s wrath and wondered what would happen the next time Anne balked at the royal will.
Chapter 47
The weeks following Elizabeth’s birth were filled with melancholy for Anne. She wandered about her apartments, brooding and weeping and crying. The wet nurse had taken Elizabeth and almost made her, her own. It nagged at Anne, thinking that she should have her own child about her, to sing to her and raise her. But the child was a princess and the mother must conceive a son, so no time could be found for Elizabeth. Anne believed it was the source of her melancholy. George came often to her chambers, when his duties with Henry were done. He’d sit with her and stare quietly into the fire, or at the walls, sometimes saying nothing, sometimes talking incessantly. It seemed he’d do anything to break her mood, or aid her in it, whichever she wanted. She could kiss him for it, thankful he didn’t nag her like Henry had begun to do.
"Henry said he would send Elizabeth away soon." She regarded her brother with large eyes.
"He says she must reside outside the city, to keep her safe. But what will safeguard me?" She asked, afraid of the haunting remembrance of the fight. The evening had grown late, a dim light from the brazier glowed around them, soothing her.
"Have no worry, Nan. Henry loves you, more now than ever. He has already given up his handsome lady and tells anyone who will listen, that you’re a woman above all women." George lazed back in his chair, brown eyes drowsing as he sat next to the brazier.
How she loved him in the moment, watched him stretch his long legs straight against the floor, pointing the toes for just a second in a large stretch. She studied the smooth contour of his face and thought, not for the first time, that it was a near mirror image of her own. As if the part of her that was steady and calm had been born two years later than the rash portion. He was so entirely beloved to her, the charisma that held no snobbery, the humor that tolerated no slander.
She watched him smack wetly as he drifted off into sleep, full lips working noisily, long brown lashes veiling the gorgeous soul of his eyes. She smiled as she watched, knowing there would never be another body in this realm who could nestle so close to her heart. No one, perhaps, except Elizabeth. But the babe looked so much like the father, it was hard to imagine her as her own. Anne barely had time to see her.
When she did, the child squealed as if she hated being taken from the wet nurse. Still, Anne loved the tiny pink thing, holding her close when she could, and cooing quietly to her. Elizabeth hardly noticed, and would weep furiously. Anne wondered if her own child would be as alien to her as the country’s women, if she would fail to charm part of her own body.
"You’re quiet," George’s warm voice filtered through her thoughts, making her remember his presence, and shattering the image of Elizabeth.
"I thought you were sleeping."
He chuckled, the swell of it drifted across the space that separated them.
"How can I sleep with you staring at me?"
Anne smiled, realizing she had indeed been staring.
"Sorry, I was thinking."
"Yes, well, I could feel it right through my closed eyelids. You certainly have a penetrating stare, to burn straight through a sleeping man’s dreams." He shifted in the chair, lying more to his side, his face in profile. "Now, I’m a bit tired. That wine you gave me must have been drugged."
"Aren’t you going to your own apartments, your wife surely waits for you."
He snorted. "We’ve had a bit of a fight, and I doubt she waits for me. So I’ll sleep in this wondrous chair, if you don’t mind. The brazier may need tending through the night." Anne thought for a moment, then nodded and shrugged. No harm could come from her brother staying outside her bedroom, and perhaps with him sitting outside, she’d feel safe enough to gain sleep for a change.
"Very well, but I’m going to my bed, I’ve not the strong back you have, fool. Sleep well, brother."
He merely grunted. She rose and threw a few shards of coal onto the brazier to ensure him a few hours rest. Then found herself studying his face again.
"Stop looking at me, will you?" The growl came, though his eyes remained closed. She said nothing, merely smiled and kissed his forehead.
Chapter 48
The days passed like whispers for Anne, slippering their way through time quietly, passing secrets as they died. Seven months since Elizabeth’s birth—and two ill-fated pregnancies. Each one searing her soul with a name. She wouldn’t speak those names aloud, nor would she tell anyone she had named each ill-fated babe. She couldn’t even speak their names to herself, while alone, or while staring deadly at the smoky stone of her chamber walls. She could only mouth them quietly in the still of the dawn, while the living pretended the spirits of the dead were gone for good. Non-gendered names, names with no sex, like her two babies. Henry had taken his love from her, more and more with each miscarriage.
The renewed passion they shared after Elizabeth’s christening dwindled. The first child’s death had been a shock to them both, and at first he had set his lips in a grim line and offered to try again. With the loss of the second, came his gruffness and the loss of zeal so that she began to guard her words carefully, hearing again her outburst during her lying in and fearing the loathing she had heard in his voice then, a loathing that had returned to his tone. The conjugal visits had stopped, but she did at least have a belly from the last one, and where he had been gruff with her before, now he was at least civil. She shut out the memories of lovemaking in quiet secretive alcoves within the castle. Pretended the murmurings of nearby hidden servants, whose presence lent season to the trysts, had never been heard. She smothered her thoughts of hunting and gambling happily with her husband, thinking her world care-free and secure.
The gambling had ended, the lovemaking as well. Now the security was being threatened—personified by dark Mary Tudor. She knew Catherine still held the country's loyalty. The Princess Dowager, as Henry ordered her to be addressed, had borne him one living child, and the country was beginning
to rally around that child as a center for revolt. Now as Anne meandered through her garden in the quiet calm of dusk, hearing the crunch of her boots on the long dead and now brown chamomile, she thought of how crisp the air tasted, how desolate the garden looked in the January weather. Anything but the way her world was changing.
The gray stone statue of a cherub caught her eye. It looked flat and lifeless against the barren slate sky. She had come to the garden to clear her mind of all the smoky black thoughts that kept creeping into her mind unbidden. Needed to breathe the burning coldness of nature so she could purge the ache that rested in her lungs. Though she knew George waited for her in her bedchamber, she refused to hurry. She needed time to think, time to recuperate, and it was imperative that she have this time alone. Against her better judgment, she had gone with him to the market in the afternoon, hooded as she was now, but with a less regal, more demure cloak.
"Come with me Nan, no one will know it’s you. You think the commoners have naught to do but discuss their King and his wife? Brah, they have more important things on their minds."
She had gone, and he had been right. She had wandered through the snow covered cobblestoned streets to the different stalls, buying trinkets and ribbons for Elizabeth, no one paying her any mind. The merchant who sold her tea had been more than pleasant, chattering about how his wife took chamomile to calm her pregnant nerves.
Anne had smiled and looked interested, patted her belly in indication of how she agreed. But as she pulled out her purse to pay, she had heard a crackly voice complaining in loud tones of how the King had become unjust, and all for the love of a common whore. Her hand froze on the halfpenny she lifted from her purse. She was aware of her brother’s brown eye steady on her face as she turned to the cause of the complaint.
"Filthy whore, stealing away the good Queen’s place, providing a bastard so the King may think he’s made the right choice." A filthy man with no front teeth plopped his wares onto the tea merchant’s bench, the spout of a handmade teapot peeked out from the burlap bag’s mouth.
"I tell you, she won’t be dancing in the palace long, not whilst Catherine’s daughter lives. The King may well force me to swear loyalty to the bastard, but I’ll fight for the true Princess when the time comes." The man accompanying him mumbled his agreement, adding an expletive.
Anne dropped the coin on the counter and made her way toward the two men.
"Nan." George tugged at her sleeve.
"Nan, come away."
She shrugged him off with a glare and spoke to the commoner.
"You speak treason, my dear man." She stared into eyes that were ringed with filth and grunge. He lifted a hand to his face, swiped at the spit that congealed on his lip.
"The only treason that’s being committed is by the whore, my good lady," he said, when he noticed she was not as bedraggled as he.
"You can’t say you support the bastard?"
George stepped between them, sleek body quickly providing a barrier.
"My mistress comes from the palace, sir. She waits on the Queen." His arm stretched across Anne’s chest, squeezing her opposite arm intensely. He turned his gaze quickly to her, dust colored brows narrowed in warning.
"Brah!" The man spit a brown thick fluid to the dirt floor where it lay in a round disgusting globe.
"Then I pray you mean her kind grace, Queen Catherine, for I see no other on the throne. But if you mean she waits on Nan Bullen, then I pity her, for she’s sure to go to hell for it."
Anne pushed George away and stomped up to him.
"He means the true Queen, you cur. The Queen your King has seen fit to put on the throne. And if you value your belly intact and your head on your shoulders, you’ll make recompense for those words."
"I’ll eat my words, good lady, for I’d rather shit them out tomorrow then mark that whore as Queen."
She wouldn’t allow her rage to interfere with her wit, and though she wanted to have him quartered right there, chose another tack.
"Then it’s good to know Her Grace, has such loyal supporters. How many may she count, for the times are dangerous to speak such words." She lowered her voice to a meek spectre. Her heart raced.
"I’d say she can count London, milady." He chewed the inside of his mouth.
"And have you the ear of London?" He puffed up his chest, and Anne was aware of the attention of all in the shop. The merchant had stopped waiting on customers.
"I’ve the ear of most men hereabouts."
She turned to George.
"Get his name, for the Queen should like to know it." She eyed the man speculatively.
"There are spies for Catherine everywhere. They are highly paid. This man will take your name, and someone will come for you. Count your fate you have met me this day."
She watched him for a second, as his face changed to disbelief, he thinking that he had chanced upon one of Catherine’s many secret supporters. His stupid appearance gave her no satisfaction.
She turned and left the shop. Now as she paused mid-step beside the stone cherub in the garden, she wondered if her guards had gone to take him yet, and whether she should punish or free him. After all, he had only spoken of the discontent in all of London, she couldn’t punish them all. She sighed heavily, and changed direction. There were other ways to deal with the problem.
"Mary must give up her status," she said when she gained her apartments. George lay half asleep on her bed, curled up with her puppy, Purkoy. At the sound of her voice, he sat up quickly.
"The country can never support two wives and two different claims to the throne. One must go, and I'll be damned if it will be me and mine." The early evening air smelled of stewed meat and sour ale for she had taken her dinner in her apartments rather than the dining hall and some of it lay still on the table by the door. She discarded her cloak on a nearby chair and sat next to him on the bed. He reached out to touch her stomach, long tapered fingers warmed her flesh through the damask gown.
"Perhaps it was not such a good idea to have her come to court in Elizabeth's household. Your spiteful tongue has turned against you this time, making her more visible, rather than humble"
She snorted. Indeed she had made a mistake—curse her impulsive rantings, for Henry had done what she'd demanded and placed his elder daughter in Elizabeth's household to wait on her. Yet the Spanish brat lost no opportunity to call Elizabeth bastard in front of the entire court. The whole situation was impossible.
"That last incident with her calling me Henry's whore in front of everyone at supper..." She clenched her long fingers into a tight fist, the nails biting flesh.
"I sent her word that she is forbidden to call herself a princess or be slapped like the cursed bastard she is." She pushed herself from the bed and took to prowling around the bedchamber.
"I've taken Mary’s jewels, her privilege of eating alone, her food and drink is no longer tested for poison...What will it take to break that damnable willfulness?" She reached for a log, threw it onto the crackling fire. An errant spark leapt to the thick rug in front. She stomped on it before it could catch.
"Perhaps you shouldn't try to break her will." George stretched back out on the bed with his hands beneath his head, ankles crossed. He looked too comfortable.
"Shouldn't I?" She swung on him, frustration and sudden anger making her want to strike something.
"If she doesn't admit my child as legitimate, the country will continue to support her. Do you know what the word revolution means, dear brother?" Angry words turned patronizing.
"There can be no pity, for with it comes the Islanders' uprising. Gad! Such a predicament. Better they were both dead, Mary and her damned Spanish mother." She paused her raving long enough to open and slam the door. A placid pop from the fire came after, then silence. She stared at her brother for a long time, let his image blur a bit.
"I know, I'll confine her to her house. No church visits, no hunting, naught. She'll see fit to acknowledge me or suffer like her mother."<
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"Anne, it can't work—it didn't with Catherine... Besides, Henry has punished her enough because of your insecurities... He won’t allow her to see her mother—because you’re afraid they manage some conspiracy. He doesn’t get to see her—because you’re afraid he’ll remember he loves her. Anne... this girl is just that... a girl who loves her father... does she not deserve her childhood?"
His defense of the brat, made Anne want to scream. She railed at him, flew across the room like a madwoman.
"She has no childhood. She is not a child... she is a princess... and princesses have no childhood. Now, speak no more of it. It will be done, or it means our death. Henry himself would use poison but Catherine is born nobility. The whole of Europe would revolt. But do not think if he tires of this bother and returns to her, she would not have us done so. Best you keep your tongue."
He merely licked his lips, seemingly unimpressed by her temper. She surveyed his frame against the satin bed-cover, upon the beautifully engraved cherry bed Henry had given her. Her temper cooled as she watched him staring back at her, large brown eyes never flinching.
"I have enough to deal with, without managing your criticisms," she continued, trying suddenly to placate him. She touched the small swell of her belly.
"This child has given me worry since its conception, Mary fights against me, and my own household squirms beneath its enforced piety." She shook her head, the black curtain of hair falling neatly around her shoulders.
"Why, even my own sister marries without my consent and gets with child speedily while I struggle to bear." A great sigh fled her lips. Such troubles, it was nearly impossible to surmount them all.
"And that Nun... thank God she’ll give no more trouble." She thought of the Nun of Kent, as she was being called, self-proclaimed prophetess who had often spoken publicly against Henry's new marriage; to the point where she foresaw Anne being torn apart and eaten by dogs. The unwanted image crept into her mind, made her tremble.
"Fortunate for you she retracted those prophecies before her execution."
Pray for Reign (an Anne Boleyn novel) Page 22