Pray for Reign (an Anne Boleyn novel) (13 page)

H
ow frightened George had grown for Anne. As he held her,
he fought tears. He felt suddenly as if something irrevocable had taken hold of
her and changed her. He sensed that a great chunk had come away and that she
mourned its loss. But he knew too, that greater than the grief was her fear
that he’d recognize her transformation and would abhor it. She tensed in his
arms and he tightened his grip, pressed her face into his neck. How could he
tell her the change was the more reason for him to love her—because she needed
it, because she so yearned to be accepted even the way she was and feared
becoming.

"Nan, look at yourself," was all he could say and
he bit hard on his lip when she sobbed into his neck.

"I’d rather not," came the muffled reply.

He held her a moment longer, to allow her to collect her
composure, then pushed her gently away. A quick glance around the stark
antechamber showed him a chair beneath a large portrait of Catherine.

"Sit," he said. She ran the back of her hand
across her tear-streaked face and the movement relieved his pent up tension.
Damned anxiety; he began to laugh. Rather than sit meekly as she was bid, she
looked defiant.

"What makes you laugh so?" Her reddened eyes
widened with sudden anger. The sickness of fear in his stomach had stopped its
hurting and had begun to feel plain strange. He took one more look at her puffy
red face and devil-be-damned posture and thought his stomach would explode. The
chuckles changed to outright laughter.

"George." He could hardly see her now, through the
blur of water in his eyes, but he could see she was not amused. Hell, he wasn’t
really amused either, but couldn’t help himself. Her hands were clenched
tightly to her sides.

"You..." he tried to explain what had so got hold
of him, but caught up on a bit of spittle that ran back down his throat. He
took to coughing along with the outrageous and helpless laughter.

"Sorry," he managed.

"Your face... is... full... of snot!" There, by
God, he had said it, and her look of embarrassed shock made him double straight
over. But the laughter didn’t last long, mercifully or no. No sooner had he
bent forward, when he was struck by a force beneath his jaw that sent him
sprawling backward. He landed quite humiliatingly on his ass. A sweet, salty
fluid came up from beneath his tongue. He looked up, knowing what had happened,
feeling terribly sorry for his outburst. Through the haze of unshed tears and
stars he could see her. Both hands were on her slim hips, but her face had
switched from anger to concern.

"And yours is full of blood," she said, and
reached out to help him up.

W
eeks later, Wolsey's examination into Henry's marriage was
scheduled to begin. Court had become stressful and menacing rather than entertaining.
A sweet, solid paranoia grabbed hold of Anne and each time someone giggled she
fought off the urge to upbraid them. Even the somberness of the Queen’s masses
failed to lend relief. There were no giggles at mass, or stares, but guilt
whispered to her with every glance from the priest. So off to Hever she went,
to stay with her mother and a handful of servants. She hunted and hawked, sang
and composed ’til she thought her soul was cleansed. Henry wrote her often,
giving her news of court, and of the proceedings—all in French of course, with
pledges of love, and desire. But one letter came which distressed her, one
which wasn’t from the King.

"Dreary summer, Anne. Common people starving because of
the poor harvest last fall. Many are crushed by the weight of other starving
people as they surround the relief carts." The sorrow in George's words
haunted her heart. But the worst statements were at the bottom of the letter,
as if everything before it had been a builder, to prepare her—scribbled at the
bottom in a sense of urgency. When she read the warning in them, the
foreboding, she knew she couldn't stay away from court a moment longer.

"The holy city has been sacked. The Pope taken
prisoner. Court is buzzing with the scandal, and Henry is furious at the
potential meaning it may have for the examination."

George wouldn't exaggerate; he wouldn't sign his letter,
"Hurry back," unless the matter was urgent. She wasted no time in
returning. Within days she was back at court, searching the corridors of Windsor
castle. She found him in the temporary lodgings the King provided to his privy
chamber, standing at the window. His back was silhouetted by the dark shade of
curtain which hung limply to the side. The shadows at his back nearly engulfed
him. She took a step forward, swallowed, and spoke.

"George?" The tremor in her voice surprised her.

"God’s blood, Anne. Thank heaven," he said. For a
moment she felt the heroine again.

"Father has been rampaging like a bear. Saying you
should be here, you should let no opportunities by."

"Yes, I can well imagine. He sees power and rank in his
grasp. He’ll never let go," she remarked dryly.

"I also imagine the news is worse than you wrote."
The tapestries trembled with his sigh and he came away from the window, seeming
to drift out of the blackness of their shadow.

"It is," he said simply.

"You look aged, brother. Has father bled the life from
you?"

He didn’t answer, merely took her hand, led her to a chair.

"Spain’s Imperial army overran the Papal city. They
thought mayhap the wealth of Christendom might be stored there." He
surprised her with a laugh, then she realized it was evidence of his tension.

"It was not," was all he said.

"So, with the Pope's imprisonment, his Cardinal's
decision on the divorce is useless," she guessed, wishing for once, she
lacked any sense of intuition.

"Correct." His manner was queer when he looked at
her.

"What else?"

"Court rumor says the abbots and cardinals were
humiliated and tortured. The invaders smashed the holy relics and despoiled the
altars."

She watched his face, and the emotions flit across it one by
one; anger, disbelief, sorrow.

"And..." she said, thinking still more boiled
beneath all this.

"Priests murdered. Monks beheaded," he said, as if
the sentences were really inconsequential. She knew better.

"More?" she asked.

He nodded.

"The nuns, young or old, were raped and beaten. The
bodies are littering the streets still. Mangled, headless corpses with severed
limbs. No one dares touch them. Fear of God, or the invaders, who knows. They
say the damned brutes kept screaming, 'Blood, blood! Flesh, flesh!'"

The eerie echo filled the room, and Anne believed he
imagined the scene. She saw it with him, imagined the bloodlust high in the
frenzied attacker's eyes. Faces full of death and insanity. She shivered, as
George did. The emptiness after his words, as eerie as the shrieks of a moment
before, echoed flatly against the stone walls.

"Oh, Sweet Jesu." She heard herself say. She felt
his touch through the thick velvet of her gown, heavy and hot on her shoulder.
She was in his arms before she knew it. The warm scent of his skin felt oddly
comforting.

"I had thought the discontent only boiled in our own
land. That the people might be tiring of the church’s debauchery elsewhere had
occurred not to me."

He kissed the top of her head, mumbled his agreement.

"There’s rumor that the Cardinal had a hand in it, that
he bribed the Emperor to overpower the papacy—he’s had his heart set on
becoming Pope for years, as far as Father says. And if Father is right, then
Henry would stand to profit as well."

"Yes," she agreed, "an Englishman has sat not
in the papacy for three hundred years or more."

"Still," he said, "it’s difficult, trying to
believe in God, when he can allow all this to happen. It makes me wonder if
perhaps God is punishing the Pope."

Anne couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded raw, like
an open wound. She withdrew from his arms, crossed her own, and sat on the hard
tapestry-covered stool in the corner.

"I wonder, too. They profess celibacy when hordes of
nuns dispose of unwanted children. They preach poverty whilst the church basks
in wealth. And all the currency it earns for those dispensations—impoverishing
already wretched people.

"How can the Pope sell God’s laws the way he does? The
Church preaches one thing in the masses, and allows its own head to bend the
laws for a farthing. I expect that is the real reason for the riots."

She shivered in the stillness of the room.

"But it doesn’t make it easier to imagine."

The fireplace roared its agreement.

"Nor does it make the result easier to bear."

George sighed with her, hugged his chest. He looked frail in
the instant, his features sorrowful and worried.

"Has father pressed you?" she dared ask again,
afraid to allow him his silence. When he didn’t answer, she rose from the
chair, knowing he’d confide when he was ready. Meantime, she had other affairs
to set to rights.

"I suppose I should visit his Grace the King. I imagine
the dispensation will be useless coming from an imprisoned Pope. Henry must be
wild with the news. Meanwhile, see if you can obtain some reading for me on the
subject... I’ve heard of a tract by Simon Fish, called
A Supplication of
Beggars
... I should like to read it. And George... I’m tired of going to
mass and hearing these wretched priests proclaim their version of God’s law...
see if you can find me a translation of the bible... either English or French
will do. You’ll need to be discreet."

When Anne had walked into his chamber, George had forced
Jayne out. He didn’t want anyone to be around save Anne when he cried. In
truth, he didn’t want Anne to see it, and had hid behind the curtains,
pretending to look out the window. He didn’t dare tell her of his confrontation
with Thomas or that their father had called her a worthless, witless wench in
such a frenzy of rage that George had cowered meekly. He simply couldn’t hurt
her with it. She’d say nothing, but would hold the slander close to her heart
and examine it. Study might even lead Anne to doubt her value, and so he
refused to tell her. Worse for him, was that he dared not defend her, for fear
Thomas would completely lose his temper and degrade him as well.

George didn’t think he could stand that. And he was afraid.
He had doubted for a long time in the church’s goodness, but had always
believed stolidly in the grace of God. He couldn’t equate the Cardinal, and the
Pope with that grace. Ever since he had been young he had heard the grumblings
in the market place about the cursed wealth and pomposity of the church amid
the poverty and humility of the populace. He’d wondered it, and pondered it,
and discussed it with his mother. But never had he truly believed God didn’t
trust or love his representatives. He always believed God would protect and
harbor them ’til Judgment Day. That he hadn’t done so, made him wonder and
doubt. Now he knew something was amiss. Had Anne been right all along—that God
was a vengeful, and judgmental God who could never be satisfied?

W
hen Anne finally found Henry, and broached the subject,
she found Henry had been working on it all afternoon. He strode back and forth
in his map room, two counselors with him. Then one went to sit at the desk,
quill in hand. When Henry noticed her standing uncertainly in the doorway he
waved his aides to the hall.

"My head hurts from all this thinking," he said as
he enfolded her in his arms. She noticed one of his eyes squinted a bit,
closing just enough to lend his face a troll-like appearance. She pulled from
his arms and sat tentatively in his large armchair, preparing herself for the
onslaught of possibilities he'd try on her. He chewed his lip.

"Since the Pope can rule not on my great matter,
everything is at a standstill."

Brilliant red brows leveled nearly horizontal over eyes that
frowned as much as his mouth.

"One solution might be to have all the English Bishops
condemn my marriage. With the combined accusations against it, it might work.
But for that John Fisher."

She remembered the cheers from the London crowd when the
Bishop regaled the King’s tract—and Henry’s smug look of pleasure as well. She
sat up.

"What of Bishop Fisher? He has the respect of all
London, what could he have done?"

"He stubbornly refuses to admit that my marriage is
invalid. And now, Wolsey has to go to Rome to straighten things out." He
paced. "I need him here."

He stressed 'here' and thumped his fat fist against the
mantel.

"This whole matter has to wait. And it can't!"

"Blast!" he yelled. "Another problem."

As he paced and twirled and stomped, an idea came to her—an
obstacle didn't have to mean defeat. Perhaps this hindrance could turn to a
Godsend. The Pope's ruling would be useless in his present condition—he could
hardly say he acted as pinnacle to the church while he sat shackled to a damp
stone somewhere in a dirty dungeon. But at least the time could be used to
great advantage, to manage the affair until the ruling would no longer be
useless.

"Maybe you could use the time to your advantage,
Rex," she suggested, anxious not to let any obstacle ruin the matter
altogether.

"How so?" Blue eyes bore into black ones. It
seemed he’d reprimand her for getting involved. She flinched a bit,
unaccustomed to the cruelty she saw in his eyes.

"There's the matter of my sister. Your affair with her
puts you in an illegal affinity with me," she started. "And Lord
Percy..."

"Yes." He rubbed his chin, the bristles rustled
audibly, faintly.

"Maybe I could see to that whilst Wolsey is away. Can’t
have us seen as related because of Mary. It would be the exact thing I'm
separating from Catherine for. And if my marriage to her is found
invalid..."

"Yes," he said again, determination igniting his
squinted eye with zeal, and relaxing it to its normal state. She breathed her
relief, not only would he be distracted from his frustration—making him easier
company—but he would be furthering the cause. Little else could be done at this
point.