Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (11 page)

“Father in heaven,” I whispered. “I feel
quite strange . . . ” then a gasping pause. ”Oh
Go-od!
”

I fully had Henry’s attention now. He nuzzled
me and asked, “Does it feel good, my precious? Is it good?” I could
sense his chest expanding with excitement, because he was able to
please me.

I was to find he worried much and often about
his abilities. I was to find these worries would one day come to
haunt me.

“Aye,” I whispered while my head lolled.
“Aye, ‘tis quite good.” I blindly reached for his face and touched
his forehead and cheek lightly. “I do love thee. Oh God I do love
thee.”

He shuddered at the words, struggling hard to
be deserving.

I felt my body take control of me in ways I
had never before experienced. My limbs encircled his waist, and my
pelvis whipped up to meet his, pushing frantically in rhythm.

His excitement grew. He found pleasure in
speaking aloud the unspeakable, and whispered it to me. Wicked
speech. Foul speech. I felt my desire grow frantic.

I whimpered and moaned and twisted. The
large, heavy bed creaked and slammed, while the wooden canopy
shuddered dangerously above us, and the drapes that hung from it
swung back and forth.

Nothing mattered except that I loved him and
needed him. I was spiraling into some sort of queer darkness that
Henry had made for me, where every one of my nerve endings demanded
that he keep going.

My frantic declarations of love were nearly a
shout. Henry’s eyes were crazed as he thrust faster and harder.
Mine rolled back in my head as I felt a tingling shoot all
throughout me. My head pitched back, and my pelvis shuddered and I
grunted an animal grunt, ashamed but unable to stop the sound, and
then I groaned
very
loudly and
very
long.

I heard muffled, quickly silenced tittering
in the hall.

Henry’s sounds joined mine. He was dripping
sweat, pressed close, nuzzling me, trying to speak of love in
gasping, broken breaths. I clutched at his back with my fingers and
held, then released and let my arms fall to my sides. I emitted one
soft “Oh God” and one truly heartfelt “I do love thee!” then a last
dying moan. The sensation receded, and I was normal again. Not
normal. Better.

Following just a few seconds behind me, face
contorted, Henry moaned as if in agony then collapsed on top of me,
kissing all the parts of my face. His eyes were shining. He lay
there happy and exhausted until his gasping breaths returned to
normal. Then he rolled over onto his side and pushed his hands
across his face to catch the perspiration.

The sounds I had made, and words I had spoken
and heard with such eagerness, suddenly seemed very shocking and
unseemly, now that the urgency had passed. I thought of the ears
against the door, and then of the fact that this was King Henry
VIII, ruler of all England. Having just coupled with the man, I
remembered the King. I went numb for a moment from the shame.

“God’s blood.” I buried my face in the crook
of his arm. “I can never look at thee again.” I felt I was speaking
the truth.

“Nor I thee,” he answered amiably. “We have
most shamelessly disgraced ourselves.”

“This was unspeakable humiliation. I cannot
bear it,” I murmured into his arm, dying a slow painful death of
intense and total embarrassment. Why could I never be calm? How
could I have allowed myself to behave in that manner with the
King?

“A reprehensible display. I thoroughly agree
and am most ashamed of myself.” He tickled me under the arm and
leaned over to kiss me. “Most ashamed indeed.”

“No! Turn away. I cannot look at thee!” I
pulled away sharply. This was far worse than an unbridled laugh. My
mother, were she among those pressed to the door, would be dying,
by now, a most horrible death. I knew Mother would never stoop so
low as to listen to her daughter’s lovemaking. I had no doubt
though, that she had someone planted there whose report could kill
her later . . .

“Then I shall have to take thee from behind,
to spare thee the sight of me.” He nodded agreeably and said “Hmm.
Next time. Indeed I shall.”

I sat up, looking away, attempting dignity.
“I will be quieter next time.”

“You will be louder, next time. I will see to
it.” He pinched my buttock.

“I could not
be
louder,” I argued,
covering my face.

“Thou
couldst
be louder, and very much
more
so. I found thine involvement to be weak and
unspirited. I expect hearty yodeling from my women, and all
throughout. Not just at the end. I shall have to train thee.
Starting . . . ” He thought about it and shook his head
contentedly. “Soon. Not now.”

He pulled me down and I buried my face in his
side. I stole a peek at him and saw him staring at the ceiling with
a very peculiar, very happy smile on his face and knew I had
pleased him much, in large part because he had so obviously pleased
me
. That softened my embarrassment, as had his teasing.
Yodeling indeed, I thought, inwardly rolling my eyes. I felt the
pumping of his good strong heart and loved him.

“By your leave, my dearest love, doth . . .
doth the Queen moan?” I whispered impulsively, knowing it to be a
dangerous question, but faintly hoping for reassurance that I had
not behaved with uncommon boorishness. I took such liberties with
Henry, and he allowed me to.

Henry stiffened and looked at me sharply,
then relaxed and tried to hide a smile. “Katherine? Moan?” He
started to say something, then imagined it in his mind and stopped
to laugh till tears formed. He reached around me and hugged me
close to his chest. “Katherine
prayed
,” he said. “In
Spanish. It sounded as if it were for a male child, but I suspect
instead that, in her heart, it was for me to be quickly done. I
know
it was. Certainly, prayers for a male child were never
heard. Prayers for me to be done were most assuredly answered.”

He grew silent for a moment, then sighed and
looked at the ceiling with an expression of sadness, replaced in
seconds by one of impatient displeasure. I was surprised by his
confession, which came to me in a soft, distant voice with his eyes
still fixed upon the ceiling.

“She lay there passionately praying, while I
hammered away with passion of another sort like a dutiful
fool
of a husband and never, my dear Anna, never
ever
moaned. I could not get her attention.” His voice drifted off
faintly and he was still and silent, staring.

Then he roused himself and turned to kiss my
head. “I shall never be able to perform the act again without a
cacophony of moaning. In truth, I shall not.” He nuzzled my ear and
murmured, “I shall insist upon it always. Remember that.”

I smiled.

“And furthermore, I should like to request of
thee never make love to God, when I am with thee.”

“There is but small danger of that,” I
assured him.

“And now
I
have a question,” Henry
said softly.

“Yes?”

“I was not the first . . . I could tell as
much earlier tonight.”

I was silent.

“Was it Henry Percy?”

I shook my head.

“Who then?”

I could not tell him the name. He knew the
man, who was now in Rome. We, to some degree, required his
assistance in proving Henry’s marriage to Katherine false in the
eyes of the Church. I had a needling concern that he would remember
me and thwart the process. I would not start a battle over a beast
with a persistent hunger for little girls, and further destroy
Henry’s chances of bringing us together. Henry would not believe me
anyway. Yet the rest he had to know. I pulled the velvet band from
my neck and showed him the scar, now small and barely visible. It
was, perhaps, too small to satisfy Henry.

“I was forced, sire. Many years ago, when I
first arrived in France. I was a child. I have not been with a man
before or since, till thee.” The anxiety rose to my cheeks. “Thou
wilt not tell anyone? I beg of thee no.”

“How do we know you tell the truth?”

How indeed? This question would one day be
asked of me again, in less indulgent circumstances with the rapes
and the scar never mentioned.

I stiffened and my heart pounded when it
occurred to me that the question was presented to me with the more
polite and distant “you”, rather than the affectionate “thou”.

More frighteningly, he had referred to
himself with the royal “we”.

“Henry, I have loved thee since I was a
child. Yet I denied even thee, for years, and thou art a king and
the most agreeable man I have known, and were relentless. Consider
that an ordinary man would be forced to wait for me at least as
long. Consider that no ordinary man would wait, as thou hast, and
would leave.”

I thought of Hal. He was also no ordinary
man. I hoped Henry knew this.

“I speak the truth.”

Henry thought about it for a moment,
silently.

“I cannot take it back, Henry. It was forced
from me. But, in truth, had I not been forced, I would be a nun.
Thou wouldst not have me now.” I dimpled and flashed him a naughty
grin, attempting to cover up a small fear that rose in my heart. “I
would be making love to God.”

Henry did not laugh as I had hoped he would.
The small fear grew.

“You will not tell me who?” he asked.

“No,” I whispered.

He lay pensively staring at the ceiling for a
very long moment, then smiled.

“It matters not,” he said. “I am in
love.”

For now, the matter was resolved.

The world knew about us within hours, and
predicted it would last only hours longer now that Henry had
discovered, finally, that I was equipped no differently from other
women. People nodded sagely or shook their heads. All of England
knew Henry’s only interest in me had been physical; my only
advantage had been in denying him, and now Henry had me. I was not
a beauty and did not have royal blood. I brought him no political
advantage. It was only sex, and Henry had been sated.

Poor stupid whore, they said. Poor dimwitted
thing. Soon, and she would be off, they said, and good riddance to
bad rubbish.

Yet I stayed. Henry moved me into his
apartments, took me with him everywhere I could possibly be taken,
and wrote to me daily, when I could not come along—sometimes
twice
daily. Henry could not abide writing letters, but
would write letters to me twice each day.

Katherine was sent away.

“Next week,” they said. “He is tiring of
her.”

And yet, I stayed.

I would have been called upon to stay with
him still, had I bedded Henry in the beginning. He would have
followed me still, if I had held out longer. It was not purely sex,
although we both found sex to be utterly necessary, and it was not
infatuation. I did not have Henry “bewitched”. We were truly and
forever in love with each other and wanted only to marry, and be
together, and live our lives.

That is all.

‘That is all,’ I say. And here I laugh.

Once we had tasted each other, we were
insatiable. I wandered the court with heavy, drowsy eyelids, always
aroused, always thinking of him, always wanting my limbs to be
wrapped around his waist, experiencing that moment in coupling when
anguish gives way to release. I thought of it endlessly, making
distracted conversation and preferring no conversation at all,
except with him.

He watched after me wherever I went, his
eyelids as heavy as mine. His touch was electric, and he touched me
as often as he could, sometimes under a table, sometimes with
seeming unconsciousness, although I knew it was purposeful. We
could go no more than a few hours without excusing ourselves and
meeting in some corner where I would tear at his codpiece, and he
would lift my skirts, lean me over a table or chair or against a
wall, quickly take me then return to his business. We took the risk
because of need, and because his chambers were too far. We were
scandalous, and there was nothing we could do. We needed relief
throughout the day, and all through the night.

I was to say, “There is urgent business—,”
and then I was to name the empty room where he would meet me. I
interrupted meetings of historic importance to pull Henry away. Few
people were amused by this except for Henry and me, and they all
knew (or I presumed they did). Foreign diplomats would shift
irritably, kings and queens would be halted in mid-sentence,
bishops would humorlessly wait. Then Henry would return with some
small thing or another askew where it had not been fastened or
adjusted properly, and the meeting would resume where it had left
off. I would be at his side to attend for the remainder, with or
without the approval of his guests. No one mentioned his short
absences within his hearing and mine, but they were watched with
amazement and disapproval, and perhaps a little envy, by
everyone.

We did not live in isolation. We did not
speak to each other, or embrace each other, or quarrel in
isolation. From the first moment we were intimate, the time we
spent coupling was measured and the outcome remarked upon. It is
difficult to maintain harmony in such circumstances, difficult to
accept that one is being watched by all for signs of monthly
bleeding, or for sickness that portends an infant, and to know
there are those who would wish both you and the infant dead. It is
difficult to love a man no one would have you love, and difficult
to know that powerful advisors are cautioning him against you. It
is most difficult to be hated when one only seeks to please.

Every word I spoke henceforth was heeded, and
repeated, and changed either in its tone, or its intent. My sense
of humor had always leaned toward irony. I suddenly saw my ironic
comments taken literally—oftentimes with the exact opposite of my
intended meaning—and found myself judged by these, and my entire
character reshaped in the eyes of all who did not know me, and some
who did. My mistakes were announced everywhere, and continue to be
retold and embellished throughout history, through all time. I was
forgiven for none of them, and with each retelling my ill-temper or
my bad judgment, or my “vicious scheming” grew worse.