Dear Heart, How Like You This (25 page)
“I remember that the first time I bedded a woman I felt something akin to the way you are feeling,” I replied, shifting further into the corner of the window seat. “Except I also felt cold and sick at heart… You do not feel like that, do you, Anna?”
She turned back towards me, briefly touched my cheek.
“No, of course not, Tom—nothing at all like that. How could I feel cold and sick at heart when last night was so beautiful? Poor Tom, how sad your first time was such a sham. Especially after all the love and tenderness you gave to me last night. Indeed, I have always suspected that such a magnificent poet could not be other than a magnificent lover.”
I bent over to kiss her, but she jerked her face away from mine, reaching out to put her hand over my mouth.
“No, Tom. I told you that last night would be the first and last time.”
I shook my head, saying: “But I still find it hard to understand why. Oh, I listened to you last night, but we are far away from court; Hever is virtually empty. No one knows what goes on between these walls…”
“Tommy!” Anne broke in. “Please, for my sake, what is between us must return to what it was when you first came into my chamber. I am not strong. If you were to kiss me now I do not know if I would have the strength to keep it just to a kiss. Please try hard to understand what I feel; all these emotions I have within me, I need to keep bottled up inside of me, otherwise everything will be lost. Haven’t you understood, Tommy? Last night was the first and only time that I can allow myself the freedom to give full reign to my heart’s desire, and to the innocent girl I once was—to the girl Hal Percy loved. Aye, Tom, to survive this game I play with the King I have to turn myself into something other than what I truly am…”
Anna then turned half away from me, looking out again at the break of day.
I heard her then say, ever so softly: “Sometimes I think I am going mad… Sometimes, Tommy, I face the truth; I desire to be Henry’s Queen.”
“Anne!”
She gazed at me and smiled strangely.
“I told you Tom—I am going mad!”
Anna laughed, a laugh so pealing out of her she soon became breathless. She then leaned over, grabbing both my hands.
“I’d make a good queen, Tom. And I could give England the prince it sorely needs.”
I carefully disentangled my hands from hers, moving even deeper into the window box at the other end from her, totally aghast.
“Anna, I think you are right. You are going mad. Or perhaps you begin to believe all that the King tells you when he does his wooing. Aye, you would make a good queen. But at what cost?”
Anne bent her head over her hands and remained silent for a long moment. Then she raised her face, looking at me again.
“At great cost, I know. But then all great enterprises are won only at great cost… England has been too long under the thumb of Rome. ’Tis time to see our country come into its own. By his efforts to make me Queen, the King begins to cut the ties to a corrupt power. Surely you realise what a mockery the papacy is?”
“Surely you realise that
all
power is corrupt, and a mockery of what it should be.”
Anna moved over closer to me, taking my right hand in both of hers.
“Perhaps when I am Queen I can change that.”
“Anna… You fool yourself if you think a single person can change how the world is. ’Tis so unlikely, my dear.”
“But the world is changing, Tom. Martin Luther has taken the papal bull by the horns and turned it upside down…”
I broke into her argument.
“Anna, you mistake what I just said. Yea, the status quo is changing, but it does not change the fact that power taints all that it touches.”
Anne removed her hands from mine, pulled the blanket tighter around her thin body, and gazed back out the window before gazing at me again.
“You are very cynical, Tom. I did not expect you to be so.”
“You forget, Anna, about my imprisonment by the Emperor’s troops, and my experiences in Rome, as well as having actually having met men who know this Martin Luther… These sorts of things do tend to make you rather less wide-eyed about the world around you. Anna, I don’t want to argue any longer about something we will never agree about. All I really want to know is where we go from here.”
“I told you, Tom. We go back to the way it was before. We make believe that last night was a fantasy that never really happened.”
As she spoke, something snapped inside me and, without wanting to, I cried out loud in agony. Anna slid back over to my side of the window seat and held on tight to my body.
“Tom! What grieves you, Tom?”
At this point I was crying. I could not help but cry. My dream had become reality but it was a dream that seemed destined to quickly turn into a terrible nightmare. Anne also began to cry and speak at the same time.
“I greatly feared I may have been asking too much of you… I told Simonette so… Oh, dear God. What a horrible mess it all is… Tom, Tommy, please forgive me. I should have left it all alone. I have been selfish, so thoroughly selfish.”
She rested her head on my chest and I could feel her silent tears soaking into the linen bed sheet I had wrapped around my body. I took one long and gulping breath, and tried my best to take back control of my shattered emotions.
“I love you. I have always loved you,” I whispered to her, brushing my lips against her hair, breathing in its rose-water fragrance.
Anna lifted up her head at this and took my face between her hands.
“I know. I think I have always known, and took for granted your love from the time I could barely walk. Please believe me, Tom, when I say that I love you too. But our lives are not our own. We belong to our families. You are married. I do not believe that you would ever bring shame upon your kin by divorcing Elizabeth, especially when it would mean putting into doubt your own son’s name. And I have told you that I cannot bring my own family to ruin…” Anne stood up then and began to walk a little way from me. She then turned back to face and talk to me again.
“Furthermore, I truly believe my father would kill me if I gave up a king to hold not even a knight in my hand. Do you not see how impossible it is for us? There is no choice for us but to go back to what once was… And is that really so hard? Oh, Tom! Can you not see? You, George, and I are tied by stronger bonds than those bonds forged between a man and woman in bed. I have always believed that our souls are securely and eternally joined by deeper bonds than those we shared yesterday.
“I truly believe, Tom, last night changed not one jot of these realities. I believe with my soul and heart that last night served to make what really connects you and me only stronger. So much stronger, I see—even if you do not—that it would destroy you to continue for even one more day your hope of what cannot ever be. I could never forgive myself… that is something I cannot risk. Oh, Tom, I could never forgive myself if you destroyed yourself over something that could never be.”
Yea, I had to admit the truth of her words. Our lives had never been our own. And something strange had seemed to happen while she spoke, and while I watched her. Call me fanciful if you will (and are not all poets fanciful?), but it seemed to me that the light of the sun now breaking through the bedchamber’s window had filled the room with a strange mellow, diffused light. This light now appeared to centre upon Anne—creating a golden aura, completely delineating her slender form. Even most of the darkness of her hair had been robbed of its blackness to be given in its stead a crown of gold. Thus, it seemed to me that there stood before me a regal figure, robed like some Roman empress. I could not help but think that I had been given a distinct vision of what Anne was meant to be. That it was the Fates themselves who had chosen for her this impending regal role. Yea—and who am I to argue with the Fates?
Shaking myself out my musings, I returned my thoughts to those concerns of the present moment.
“Aye, Anna, I admit the truth of all that you have just said. But I have one request, Anne, just one. I want you to kiss me one last time. And not the kiss of life-long cousins… Anna, what I want is for you to kiss like you did so many times last night, and I promise that I will be strong enough for both of us to keep it to just a kiss; a farewell kiss, if you will. But a kiss that will always be to me another precious memory of this brief time we shared, even if it means naught to you.”
“Tommy… My sweet Tom!” Anna laughed and lifted a hand to me. “Come here, and kiss me then.”
I went over to her and took her in my arms. I looked deeply into her eyes and then joined my lips to hers. That last kiss lingered on for as long as I could maintain it. Indeed, what stopped it and made me pull away from her was the awareness that my senses were demanding to continue in such a way as I promised her I would not. She was right: the longer I had hold of her, the harder it was to give up my dream.
Anna, after I had released her from my embrace, crumpled down, kneeling on the floor.
With her tears flowing unchecked, she looked up at me and said: “Tommy, you have made this so hard.”
I laughed wryly, and went back to sit at the window seat. I wanted to get as much distance between us as I could.
“I am glad I’ve made this hard for you. At least I can take the consolation with me that things could have been so much different if we had been born other than what we are.”
Standing up with unsteady movements, Anna gazed at me ardently, her dark eyes huge and shining with tears yet unshed.
“Yes, Tom, I do believe now that you are right. Perhaps if our lives were different… who can tell? But, Tom… I am very tired now. Tommy, I beg you to leave me… return to your room. We will see each other later, but at this moment I wish—and beg—the favour of being by myself.”
I came over to her and kissed her gently on the forehead.
“Yea, Anna, I too wish to be alone… Come to your bed and try to go back to sleep. You truly are looking much too wan for my liking. I will dress as quietly and go as quickly as I can.”
Anna appeared to me to be close to fainting, so I again picked her up and carried her to the bed—this time for different reasons. Desire had now completely gone from me to be replaced by the heaviness of utter sadness—sadness threatening to have me again in tears. I carefully placed Anne on the bed, covering up her slight body with the bedclothes. I kissed her tenderly—though chastely—on her lips, her eyes remaining shut as if she had already gone fast to sleep in my arms. Gathering up my clothes, I retired to the other side of the room and dressed myself as hurriedly and silently as I could.
She wept and wrung her hands withal.
The tears fell in my neck.
She turned her face and let it fall,
Scarcely therewith could speak,
Alas the while!
I reflected, as I descended the stone staircase from Anne’s bedchamber, on how eerie and empty Hever Castle seemed. ’Twas often the case that a dwelling emptied of most of its usual inhabitants when a member of the household had serious illness such as the sweat, leaving only a few servants to care for the one sick. This appeared to be the situation here at this time.
Last night had been like Anna and I were the only two people left in the world. In a sense this feeling still lingered. Indeed, going down those cold, stone stairs I felt more alone than I had ever been in my life.
I arrived at the chamber where I used to sleep as a boy, and went inside. There I sat on the edge of the bed, bent my head, and howled out my grief until I had no more tears left to cry.
So much had gone wrong in my personal life in recent times. Besides the happenings of the day before, I also found myself thinking about the way my marriage had gone from bad to worse over the years.
“
Dum spiro, spero
,” Father Stephen often said to us when we were children. And so it was—I had breathed and I had hoped. But now last night had opened me up in such a way that the door to years of pent up emotions remained left wide open. Now I had to face up to what was true of life and make some hard decisions.