And in those long, emotion-laden moments just after our lovemaking, it suddenly came home to me that Anna may have realised (and perhaps she did) how often I had stood by watching, wanting her, but had remained silent. Never, ever coming forward to speak to her of my desires. Perchance, George had told her how my heart had broken when my father refused to speak for me, saying Anne was destined for a greater match than the one she could gain with me. That wanting her was like a dog howling for the moon—insisting that I marry elsewhere as decided by the family. Now Anne had given me freely a part of my desires. ’Twas not a dream. I could not believe it was not a dream, even though I held my dream, could feel my dream’s naked, soft warmth right here, right here next to me.
As I continued to lay wakeful, with my sweet love nestled in the crook of my arm, I reflected it very likely that Anne had chosen to bestow upon me something she wished not to bestow on the King. Perhaps too, I thought, it had been Anne’s great need to be loved and comforted, on a day when she felt herself so alone and afraid, that at long last had won her for me.
Anne soon began to stir in my arms and I looked down at her. Her eyes looked so wide with fright that I held onto her tighter.
“What is it, Anna?”
“Do you hate me very much, Tommy?” She whispered so quietly that I had to bend my head close to her to be able to hear.
I stared at her, saying with surprise, “Why, Anna, should I hate you?”
She stirred uneasily in the bed.
“Because I used you to rid me of a virginity which has burdened me over long. I am so sorry, Tom. I would not blame you if you hated me. But I rather it was you, if it could not be my sweet Hal, to be the first with me. Simonette told me, when I first began to become a woman, that your first man puts a brand upon you that you carry until the day you die. There is no way that I would have wanted my branding to be that of the King.”
I could not help but laugh.
“I have been laying here thinking that may have been the reason for your sudden passion for me,” I replied with a grimace. “But I do not hate you. I could never hate you. I think I would accept any affection from you, on any terms, as long as you always thought well of me.”
Anna began to sob as if her very heart was breaking.
“Oh, Anna, my lovely girl… I have never known you for such tears. What have I said to cause you so much grief?”
I cradled her in my arms as I would my little girl. Never had Anna struck me as she did that day as someone in great need of comfort; someone who needed to have all her hurts kissed better.
Anna took great gulps of air, wiping away the tears from her eyes. She reached up to caress my face.
“Tommy, Tommy. I do truly love you dearly, and I am glad that something about today helped me come to the decision to seduce you to my bed. You spoke of wanting me to think well of you; I was so afraid that
you
would not think well of
me
. Especially since this day must be the first, last, and only time that we can be true bed-mates.”
“But why, Anna? Why? I know enough about a woman’s body to know that you found pleasure with me. I know that I am wedded to another, though after all the events of the past few years, I no longer consider myself to be Bess’s husband. Especially since it is you who I have loved and wanted since we were children. Now you have given me some of my lifelong dream—why should you say it is to end so soon? We can…”
“Tommy!” she said sharply, breaking into my imaginings.
“Were you not listening at all to me before? I belong to the King. I have no other choice but to belong to the King. I love you dearly, Tom. I love my brother George more than life itself. I love my sister; even to my father do I feel enough duty to ensure that he is not destroyed. The King’s vengeance is a thing beyond measure.”
“Do you think my family knows not of the vengeance of Kings?” I asked her.
“But yourself, Tom, you do not really know… You do not realise, Tommy, I have only one possible way to save the people I love, and myself. I must become Harry’s Queen. And I must have his son. ’Tis so amusing, cousin. I could laugh, if it was a subject for laughter, at the plans I once made for revenge, Tom. We all would be safer if I had become his mistress in the beginning, like my sister did, thinking it was such a great honour to have the King thrusting between her legs. But my beginning with the King was when I was so busy with my plotting and my snares. Teasing him with half promises and rendezvous never kept, because I am a pure and modest maiden who greatly desired to be wed before she was bedded.”
She sat up in the bed then, pulling up the blankets at the same time to cover her nakedness.
Looking at me, she said: “Now I have no choice but to go on with what I have begun. Can you not see, Tom? The King would destroy us all if I bow off at this point of the play. For this is what I believe this grand passion has become for him, some sort of make-believe play where he is the errant knight winning the pure maiden from his enemies. Perchance, Tommy, he sees himself as a Tristan and me an Isolde in some sort of glorious love story where to achieve his desires he must sacrifice all. Who knows? I only begin to tremble when I ponder what will happen when he wakes up to the truth. I am but flesh and blood and not at all like the fantasy woman he imagines himself to be in love with.”
“But surely, Anne, there must be a way you can break away from the King?”
“Tommy, believe me, even a nunnery would be no refuge for me any longer. Even if the King hadn’t started to think about disbanding all England’s religious orders, what I have heard him call those bloodsuckers of his kingdom! Rely on me; I know the King. I have no escape.”
Anna came back to snuggle closer to me. I put my arm around her, reflecting on what Anna had said. For a long while we lay abed, both of us lost in our own reflections and fears.
I could not help thinking and hoping that Anne was wrong. Surely the King was not the complete monster she believed him to be. Yea, I knew he had the greatest vanity that could be found from here to the end of Christendom, but Anna was not even sixteen when he decided to break her heart, and he more than double that! Surely the King had enough man in him, enough honour, to give a young woman some kindness and so her freedom.
Suddenly a thought struck me—a thought that was both terrible and pleasing.
“Anna?”
She lifted up her head. Her eyes were big and luminous in her pale face.
“Yes, Tommy?”
“What happens if we have made a child today?” I asked her.
Anna flung herself deeper into her pillows, and stared up at the ceiling.
“I do not think that will happen, Tom. I have been sickening for a long while, even before I caught the sweat, and my courses have stopped. I do not think or believe my body is well enough to begin the making of a child. Even if I was, Tom, Simonette is wise regarding these matters. I tell you true, Tom, Mary would have left a litter of babies behind in France if Simonette had not accompanied me to the French court. I will ask her to prepare a potion for me to drink tonight.”
I sat up abruptly in bed, dazed by her words.
“You are going to tell Simonette what happened here between us?”
Anne laughed up at me.
“Tom. Dear Tom. She knows. Indeed, ’twas Simonette who first put it in my mind to seduce you this afternoon… She knows everything about me, and she knows everything about the wooing of the King. Simonette also agrees with me that the only way to keep the King’s desires burning is to keep on denying to him what he thinks he wants… Yet I too have desired the fulfilment allowed other women. It is so difficult for me, Tom. I am a normal woman deprived of a normal life. It has been hard and painful, Tommy, when I think that only but for the King I would have been Hal’s wife and a mother probably three or four times over. I worry that when the King gains his desires from me, my power over him will begin to wane… Indeed, I truly fear that once he has gained his desires the King will begin plotting my destruction.”
I pulled back from her, saying crossly: “Oh, Anna. This is too much! You cannot be right about all this!”
“Aye, Tom, I feel in my blood that I am right. The King is enjoying the chase, but what is the end of the chase but to make the kill? That is another reason why I must become his Queen. ’Tis the only way I can ensure my survival at the end of the chase. Tommy, Tommy, sometimes it is so hard for me to resist the King’s batterings on my virtue. Hal Percy, so very long ago, lit a fire in me that often seeks to consume me. Today it consumed us both… I am so sorry if it seems to you that I have used you for my own ends. I know I can trust you, Tom.”
“Anna—my heart—I would die before I betrayed you.”
“Aye—I know, Tom. Otherwise I could not trust you with my life—for if the King was to find out about today I fear that his anger would be so great that I shudder at the likely consequences. Of late I find it hard to think clearly, but still—there are in my heart things that I can hold on to. I almost died, did you not know, Tom, when I ailed with the sweat? The King sent to my bedside Doctor Butts, his second physician, but Simonette swears that she alone saved me.”
Anne laughed, and rolled on her side towards me, resting her head upon my shoulder.
“Simonette tells me that she cut an apple into three, and wrote upon its pieces:
The father is uncreated
,
The father is incomprehensible
, and
The father is eternal,
and that, and that alone Simonette assures me, is what saved me when the fever was at its worst.”
Again Anne shifted in the bed, now lying back amongst the pillows.
“You know, it felt strange to be so ill. When I had the fever, it was like I was plagued by dreams, which were all so real. Aye… Tommy, I came very near death, but one thing kept me comforted as I felt death try to pull me into its final embrace. I have loved, and been loved, Tommy. Not by the King—what does he know of love? Sometimes I find myself so full of pity for him. The King has so much—yet so very little. But I… I’ve always known what it is to love and be loved.”
I reached out and picked up a lock of her hair that was lying on the pillow, intertwining it loosely in my fingers before bringing it close to my face to breathe in its scent of rosewater. My heart constricted tight in my breast. I looked at her, swallowing my urge to cry.
I cleared my throat, and said: “Sweet love… my beloved—forevermore.”
Eyes shining, Anna smiled at me tenderly.
“Loved by George, and Simonette, and Hal, and you—always you. Aye, suddenly it struck me as I lay there close to death that your love has been like my life’s beacon that drew me always into a safe and secure harbour. Sweet Tom, you have never asked for anything from me, so let today make up for all I cannot ever give.”
Laying back deeper into the pillows, she reached for my hand, holding it firmly in both of hers. ’Twas as if she took my oath, unsaid, to accept without complaint what she had given. What could I do? Yea, what else could I do but draw her closer into my arms and give her lips a lingering, tender kiss. Then I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.
I awoke in a strange bed—alone. If it was not for Anne’s night attire flung untidily on the bed, I could have easily persuaded myself that the strange happenings of the night before were some illusion of my senses. I got out of the bed, wrapping the sheet around my body, and went in search of Anne. I found her seated in a corner of the room’s partly recessed window seat, wrapped in a blanket, looking out at the break of day.
“Could you not sleep?” I asked her.
She looked at me, smiling shyly through a half veil of dark hair.
“Yea, Tom, I did sleep for a while. But then I awoke and my body reminded me of what I had done. It is very amusing, Tom, but I really had not expected that losing my virginity would be such a soul-shaking event. I feel so different, as if I had been reborn in some way. Even the dawn looks different today.”
I sat near her, on the other side of the window seat, and brushed gently away with my hand the hair hiding her face.
“Did I hurt you too much?”
She laughed softly, tossing up her head so her hair fell away from her face. I saw tears glistening in her eyes, but they seemed to be tears of great emotion rather than tears of any great sadness.
“Dear Tommy, today my body tells me that you branded me well. But it was only what I asked for, so I have no complaint… I just did not expect to feel so brimming with all these feelings.”
“What sort of feelings?” I asked her.
She reached out and took my hand.
“So many different feelings that it is hard to break into them and name them all.”
“Why don’t you try to, dearest? Try to for me.”
Anne released my hand and looked out the window. I looked also, silently sharing with Anna the beauty before our eyes. Indeed, the sky, ablaze with so many different shades of pinks, promised so much for the new day. Her gaze returned to me.
“You want me to speak to you of my feelings, Tom… ’Tis true when I say they are many… For one, I feel regret, yet not regretful. ’Tis like I am grieving for a part of me that was all innocent, and now that is gone forever. Perhaps I am sad to farewell the girl and unsure if I welcome the woman. I cannot help but feeling, Tom, there is so much I will need to rediscover about myself that, at the moment, ’tis like I am on some perilous precipice where I am desperately trying to find my balance.”