Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (18 page)

“I shall not see him,” I answered softly,
defiant, not quite meeting her eyes. “He hath no business with me.
It is Father he comes for.”

“His Highness has expressly requested thy
presence at the audience. Thou wilt obey.” She waved the servants
over and had them fit me with a gown. The three servant women
pulled me from the bed and stood me upright, stuffing my arms and
head into the outfit while I let out muffled sounds of outrage and
Mother watched. I wrestled through the fitting with tearful
protestations, snapping at the servants for pinching me when they
examined the fabric for stains and wear.

“I know what business His Highness needs to
discuss with me,” I shot toward my mother. “‘Tis the same business
he had with Mary. I will have none of it.”

My mother responded by walking up to me and
slapping my face.

“Thou hast not grown too large for the whip,”
she hissed.

He came.

The servants had spent the morning pressing
cold cloths to my face in order that I might appear presentable
before the King. Mother repeatedly threatened me against more tears
lest I undo their work and spoil my features, and walked in often
to see that she was being obeyed. My stays were fastened, my gown
was brushed, and my hair and headpiece were arranged.

My mood was foul, but I was ordered to work
my mouth into a smile, and so I did. The smile had not reached my
eyes when I glided down the stairs, through the hallway, and into
the study where Henry and my father awaited me.

I gave a deep, respectful curtsey, and sought
a chair at an awkward angle from Henry, where he could observe me
only by twisting his head. It was a carefully calculated gesture
that could not be technically viewed as defiant, since women were
expected to remain silently in the background. However, both Henry
and my father were immediately cognizant of the distance I had
chosen to place between them and myself. My father in particular
was outraged, although he could not speak of this before the
King.

I could determine from the way in which my
father sat and smiled at me that I would be facing the gentle whip
before the day was over. He did not know how else to deal with me.
Heretofore my misconduct had always been the result of mischief or
over-excitement; Father had never once before confronted mutinous
insubordination.

This meeting was an opportunity for Father to
negotiate for a better position at court—every audience with the
King was a possible stepping stone to more titles and wealth—and
his position was particularly fortunate in that he had me as bait.
His intention was to dangle me temptingly with one hand while he
begged with his other. My failure to cooperate in this ambitious
endeavor threatened Father with a lesser position, or no position
at all, and such a threat was not to be withstood.

“Aye me,” I thought and crossed my hands at
the wrist in my lap. I pressed my mouth into an insipid smile, and
tried to appear as if I had no thoughts and was somewhat dim, as
women were expected to be. I looked out the window at a robin and
awaited further instruction.

Henry twisted around to face me while
continuing his conversation with my father, and found the position
uncomfortable. He sighed impatiently. He rose his hand in the
air.

Seeing the movement from the corner of my
eye, I looked sharply in his direction, and quickly lowered my
eyes.

“Sir Thomas, please invite Mistress Anne to
join our discourse. She shall sit here.” He waved to the empty
chair next to him.

Father nodded and stood, turning toward me.
With a frozen smile and a controlled movement of his eyes, he
ordered me to rise and approach him, then took my arm and helped me
into the chair beside Henry. I settled my skirts while they resumed
their conversation, which I was not, after all, invited to
join.

A few moments passed. My father was looking
increasingly smug, I noticed, convinced he had just persuaded the
King to present him with a coveted appointment.

Then, seemingly startled by a sudden thought,
Henry appeared as if he just this instant remembered something
important. With feigned urgency, he sent my father out with a
cryptic message for one of the royal servants. It was a message
that could only be delivered in person, Henry said, and Father was
to return with a response.

Neither Father nor I had any doubt that he
would not find the servant in question.

Father left unwillingly with resurfacing
anxiety about the appointment. (He would get it, and more. Henry
simply had no patience for Father’s tactics, with Mistress Anne in
the room.) He feared what I might say to the King without a
parent’s cold stare to remind me of my duty, and made every effort
to locate the servant he had been sent to find. He was nursing a
small hope that the message was real so he could finish the
business of delivery, then return to the task of chaperone and
wheedler of wealth.

He unhappily discovered there was no such
person in the service of the King. This did not, however, surprise
him. He dared not reenter the room and resume his discussion with
Henry after receiving this intelligence, for it clearly indicated
he was unwelcome and had been ordered to leave. He waited in his
sitting room and fretted, periodically dispatching servants to
quietly observe and report to him. He had had the foresight to send
one in just as he had left us, fearing the worst, and that servant
made a quiet but annoying attempt to hover nearby without being
noticed.

Once he had succeeded in removing my father
from the conversation, Henry turned his attention toward me.

“Your presence has been missed, these long
weeks,” he said with interest that appeared only polite and
negligible. I would discover later that Henry had a remarkable
capacity for hiding his feelings when he chose to, and his seeming
indifference was evidence of this self-control.

Two weeks was not an overly long spell. I was
also in disgrace and officially awaiting his approval of my return
(unofficially I was under Katherine’s kind command), so the
conversation was a pretense. I had no patience with pretense under
the circumstances. I wished him far away from me and, perhaps,
engulfed by flames.

I responded with a weak smile. “Thank you,
Your Highness. I have been unwell.”

“Nothing serious, we trust?”

I gave him a long, quizzical look and raised
one eyebrow. “I cannot say, Your Grace. If Your Grace might first
kindly condescend to define the word ‘serious’ within the context
of the question so that I understand the meaning, I might form a
reply.” I smiled at him and dipped my head in a slight bow.

The servant cocked her head at my words, then
slipped within my view to fix upon me a long, hard stare of
exasperated warning as she passed. She floated out of my sight, and
busied herself with some ornaments behind me, still carefully
within earshot.

Taken aback for a moment by a remark and
demeanor that could be construed as impertinent, Henry’s eyes began
to twinkle. He was remembering our meeting at the dance and was
charmed instead of angered.

“Forgive us. Your health is not in danger?
That is what we meant.”

“I am in no danger.”

“We are pleased.”

“Your Highness is most gracious to be
concerned.” I dipped my head again.

Henry caught the hint of irony in my slight
emphasis of the word “concerned”, and cleared his throat. I flashed
him a sweet smile. He smiled back, slightly confused, sensing
insult but taken in by the smile. He cleared his throat a second
time, and attempted another topic, one in which we had a common
interest.

“We were pleased by your performance in the
music room, shortly before your departure. You sang a song that has
haunted us since. A song about birds, was it not?”

“I know a song about birds, Your Highness.
Yes.”

“Who was the author of the piece?”

“I composed it myself, Your Highness. A
friend wrote the words.”

“We would have you sing it for us now.” He
smiled and waited expectantly.

It would have pleased me to strangle him. It
was a melody I had written for one of Hal’s poems. What would
happen now, I knew, was that Henry would assume ownership of the
piece and have his musicians learn and perform it. They would all
change parts of it to suit their tastes, replace the words, and the
song would no longer be mine. It would no longer be Hal’s. It would
belong to the court.

I had the lingering servant bring me my lute,
and I unhappily fingered the strings. I had not played for days and
the weather had been damp, so the instrument was out of tune. I
took an overlong while to put it to rights again, then plucked the
strings softly, as if hoping Henry could not hear. It was a happy
song and I did not feel up to singing it in the quick, playful,
lilting tones that had captured Henry’s attention back at court. I
did not feel I could. I played it in a lower key than I normally
would, and made the song sad. I hoped he would think I
mis-remembered which song, dislike my delivery, and leave it
alone.

Part of the way into the song I became lost,
as I often did. I had no control over my muses; they came unbidden
and they chose to visit me at this moment with Henry in the room.
He was no longer of any concern to me. My eyes became unfocused and
I was transformed into a conduit, drawing music from some source
outside of me, pulling the notes into my heart and then pushing
them out through my fingers and throat. I felt familiar shivers all
throughout, and tears rose in my eyes. Music affected me most
profoundly.

Sadness suited the melody, even more than did
joy. It suited the feelings in my heart. What had started out as a
jig was now becoming a ballad, and I knew in my soul it was
beautiful. I grew more and more absorbed and sang it, not once, but
twice so I could impress upon myself exactly how the song should
sound. I barely remembered Henry, so deep was my concentration. I
was again dedicating the song to Hal only this time it was not with
happiness. I felt Hal in my heart and thought of that more than I
thought of the music. I let the melody seek me out.

I finished the piece a third time and stopped
to listen to some notes in my head. No, not my head. The new notes
came, indeed, from my heart, for no real music is written with the
mind. The song wanted minor keys. I hummed them and transferred
them to the lute, then replayed the chords quickly, stopping,
humming, replaying. Excited, I began the song again, incorporating
the changes.

Henry did not stop me. He was a musician
himself and knew precisely what was happening. He fully understood,
and sometimes spent his free hours in the music room watching other
musicians work through this very process. It fascinated him and
made his heart ache at the same time to be in the midst of us, for
he felt that he could locate the portal to the source of the music
himself, and learn to do what we did, if he just watched with
enough sincerity. He took no offense to my lack of attention toward
him. He leaned forward slightly, listening with concentration
nearly as deep as my own. He sometimes nodded but he was not
smiling. His mouth was slackened and his eyes were unseeing.

“Aye! Yes!” I cried, after successfully
playing it through. The melody had given me a signal that it was
finished and my mind drifted back into the room with Henry.
Melodies, I had found, seemed to create themselves without my
conscious involvement and they always knew when they were complete
(unlike painting, which for me always cried for one more, possibly
disastrous, stroke of a brush). With an instrument in my hand and
my mind tuned to that source outside of me, I became possessed. I
could go for hours without food or drink, unaware that my bladder
was full or that my leg had fallen asleep. It was as if I had two
minds: one that lived within my body, and one that lived without.
The mind that dwelt outside of me and within the music gave
pleasure to others as it did to myself, inflicting goose bumps and
involuntary tears on many who heard me.

Even the worst of my enemies could not deny
me that.

When I snapped out of myself, I could not
remember the steps I had taken to create a song. It happened to me
again with this one, and I remembered every note but had no
recollection of why I had chosen one note over another, or how long
it had taken me to do it. Watching now, it appears as though the
effort took me over an hour. It was an overlong time for a king to
sit and patiently wait, yet he said nothing and showed no sign of
irritation.

This was not the song I had begun. It was a
new one. I knew it was special, as if I had given birth to a
favorite child.

Beaming with pleasure I turned to Henry and
gave a deep satisfied sigh. “I think I shall keep it this way,” I
said almost to myself, turning back to the lute and caressing it.
“It is much improved.” It was a conversation not unlike one we
might have had in the music room.

Henry said nothing, but was staring at me
with an odd expression, head cocked like a child’s. He would not
turn his eyes from my face, and they held an expression I had seen
before. It was like seeing Hal’s face again. It was a respectful,
probing look of wonderment.

This was the moment he fell in love with me.
This was the precise moment when the game became real.

His voice, when he spoke, would sound soft, I
knew.

“Did it please Your Grace?” I asked,
concerned. I remembered that the performance had been for Henry’s
benefit, not my own. I came back to myself ashamed and a little
frightened. The song that he had requested was not the song I had
offered. It occurred to me that I might have angered him, for I had
not consulted with him before changing it, nor had I asked
permission before playing it through several times.