Chapter 23
Anna von Kleve
Two women arrived in the night, cloaks drawn, hoods up. Through the window upstairs, Anna saw them ushered inside by the cook, and her curiosity was piqued. She knew the comings and goings of her estates well, and she was not expecting any visitors.
“Come back to bed, darling,” Brigid called from across the room. “It’s late.”
Anna stepped away from the window and crossed the stone floor to her bed. She bent to drop a kiss on Brigid’s lips. “I’ll return in a moment,” she promised. “There’s something I need to see to.”
Brigid flopped back against the pillows, not bothering to conceal a yawn as she ran a hand through her tangle of golden curls.
The gesture was almost enough to stay Anna’s feet.
Anna loved nothing more than twirling one of those curls around her finger as they lay in bed together after exploring each other’s hearts and bodies with the same wonder they’d discovered a year ago when their romance began.
Anna kissed her lover once more, then shrugged into a dressing gown and tucked her feet into silk slippers.
With silent steps and a candle in hand, she left her chamber and wound down the staircase until she reached the main floor.
Henry had offered Anna Hever Castle, the Boleyn ancestral home; Richmond Palace; and several other beautiful estates, all in exchange for a quiet annulment of their marriage, which Anna had been eager to grant.
She hadn’t spent much time in the castle yet, and it all felt so unfamiliar.
The stone walls were old, even for England, and the property had been used as a defensive keep for most of its existence.
Anna didn’t like to think of how many battles had been fought in the surrounding marshland, how many bodies and bones had been swallowed by the sucking, squelching earth.
She also didn’t like to think of the castle’s most recent owners, the Boleyns, who had all died one after the other: George and Anne after that horrible scandal, their mother Elizabeth and father Thomas in the two years that followed.
Only Mary survived, or so Anna was told.
She wondered sometimes if that family had been cursed, and if the curse was born from this ancient, cold house.
Anna followed the sounds of voices toward the drawing room, keeping one hand along the wood-paneled wall for guidance.
The drawing room door was ajar, and Anna saw shadows moving about in the glow of the candlelight.
Though she kept a rather informal household, her staff would never presume to use the castle for their own purposes.
Anna tiptoed closer to the door, her ears straining to make out the hushed voices inside.
“…apologize for the late hour.”
The voice was unfamiliar to Anna. An older woman, she guessed, based on the speaker’s cadence and the slight grit to her tone.
“Not to worry.” This from the castle cook, causing Anna to raise her brows in surprise. “We’ve been expecting you for the last few days. I’ll tell the mistress my cousins have come to stay, and we’ll put you in one of the servant rooms.”
“That’s all right,” said a third female voice. “We’ll get what we need and be gone before the lady of the house knows we’re here. It’s simpler that way, but I am grateful for the hospitality.”
Anna couldn’t contain herself any longer. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. “You’re very welcome,” she said. “Though I don’t recall inviting any guests.”
The three women inside startled, but it was Anna whose candle clattered to the ground, flame extinguished.
Though their voices had been foreign to her, the two women seated in her drawing room were not. She had studied their portraits a hundred times during her six short months as Henry’s wife, though she’d never expected to see their faces with her own eyes, at least not on this side of the grave.
Anna took a step backward, blinking hard.
Was this a dream? She pinched her arm, but she didn’t wake up, nor did her sight waver.
She knew, with heart-stopping certainty, that Catherine of Aragón and Anne Boleyn were staring back at her.
They had aged since their portraits were last done, yes, but she’d know those eyes, those faces, anywhere.
The castle cook, Mrs. Garthwaite, was the first to recover. “Your Highness, I apologize for the intrusion,” she said, no small measure of anxiety in her words. “May I present my cousins—”
“I was not aware you were related to royalty, Mrs. Garthwaite,” Anna interrupted breathlessly. Surely that couldn’t be the case. But what other explanation was there? What were two queens—both dead—doing talking to her cook?
Mrs. Garthwaite looked nearly as flustered as Anna did, glancing back and forth between the cloaked women and her mistress. “Pardon, milady?”
Catherine of Aragón stood, a smile on her lips that did not stretch to her eyes. The ice-blue chips watched Anna warily. “Mrs. Garthwaite, do you mind if we have a moment alone?”
The cook nodded slowly and gave a curtsy. “Again, I apologize for overstepping, milady. I didn’t…I didn’t think you’d be awake.”
It was a meager explanation, but Anna was too stunned to worry about the impropriety. She waved a hand to Mrs. Garthwaite, who edged past Anna and out of the room, tossing one final look of bewilderment at her mistress as she went.
“Close the door, please,” Catherine said. Her voice was satin over stone, full of a queen’s command. Anna did as she was bid.
Once the latch clicked into place, Anne Boleyn was out of her seat, crossing the room in long strides.
Anna saw the glint of a blade in her hand and a scream built in her throat, but before she could think to shout or move, Anne had pressed a finger against Anna’s lips.
The former queen said something, the words muddled in Anna’s ringing ears.
When she licked her lips, they tasted like salt and copper.
They tasted like blood.
“She will tell us the truth,” Anne said to Catherine, who had also abandoned her chair and was standing a few feet away.
The older woman nodded. “What is your name?” she asked Anna.
“Anna von Kleve,” Anna responded, the words rolling off her tongue without her thought or permission. Her eyes widened in panic, but Catherine shook her head.
“It’s all right,” Catherine said, though Anna’s fears did not ease. “Do you know who we are?”
Anna tried to resist, but she found her mouth opening again of its own accord. “Yes. You are Catherine of Aragón. And that is Anne Boleyn.”
Of course they were. Catherine had the firm set to her jaw and the steely independence in her gaze that Anna had admired from her portraits.
Her hair had gone gray, but it still swept off her forehead with graceful strokes, just as Lucas Horenbout had captured her.
Time had not stripped Anne of the mirth that lit her eyes and quirked the edges of her lips, nor had it taken from the beauty of her figure.
Anne stepped closer, peering at Anna with open curiosity. “How do you know us?”
“From your portraits,” Anna replied. “I have studied them—all the paintings in all the palaces in London. I love to paint, though I fear I’ll never be considered an accomplished artist.”
Why was she telling them this? More importantly, why were they here? Alive, in her drawing room, wielding some sort of influence over her mind and body?
“Oh Lord,” Anna moaned, her knees suddenly going weak. “Are you here to haunt me? Is it because I’m in this house?”
At this, Anne looked amused. “Well, I must admit I do find it a bit indelicate that you would take up residence here of all places.”
Anna slumped into a chair, bobbing her head in agreement. “I know, I know. I told the king as much, that I didn’t want it, that it didn’t feel right.”
But Henry hadn’t listened. He’d insisted that the house go to good use, and who was Anna to refuse?
She would have signed the papers even if Henry had gifted her a cottage on a remote island in the middle of the ocean.
This was her first stay at Hever Castle, and Anna should have known it would be haunted by the ghosts of queens past. She crossed herself hurriedly, a shiver snaking down her spine.
“I rather like you,” Anne declared, startling Anna with the warmth in her voice. “You’re a vast improvement over Jane Seymour.”
Anna gasped. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” Unless, perhaps as ghosts themselves, the same rules didn’t apply? Though when Anne’s finger had touched her lips, it hadn’t felt ghostly. And hadn’t there been blood? Anna was quite sure ghosts could not bleed.
“I will tell you this quickly and in the strictest of confidence,” Catherine said with none of Anne’s cordiality.
“You are not hallucinating, dreaming, or being haunted. Both Anne and I are alive. We are here to do something incredibly important, and we will not suffer any delay or impediment. If you dare tell anyone, it will be you who is dead. Do you understand?”
Anna nodded weakly, even though a thousand questions rattled around her brain.
Catherine studied her for several seconds. “Very good. Now I suggest you go back to your rooms.”
“But what will I tell Brigid?” Anna blurted out. “I promised her I’d come right back to bed, but—”
Anna stopped short. She had just said Brigid and bed. She would never do that, never give up their precious secret. Something was terribly wrong with her.
“You—you have put some kind of enchantment on me,” she accused, pointing a shaking finger at Anne Boleyn. “You have made me say things I do not wish to say!”
Anna scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand, then spat on the floor, removing any trace of the blood she’d been marked with.
Of course the rumors were true and Anne Boleyn was a witch.
How else could her presence here tonight be explained?
Only some dark, twisted magick could bring someone back from the dead.
Anne was still watching her with something approaching delight, and it made Anna shiver again. “Lina, she is nothing like what we were told.”
“Do not get it in your head to bring her into this,” Catherine replied, sounding weary. “You know we don’t have much time.”
“Bring me into what?” Anna interjected, struggling to get up out of her chair but finding that her legs were still little more than jelly. “You can’t make me say things I don’t want to say!”
Anne sat in the chair next to Anna and laid a hand on her arm. “Well, actually I can.”
Anna snatched her arm back as though she’d been burned.
“But,” Anne added, “I don’t want to. So why don’t you and I come to an agreement?”
Catherine sighed loudly. “This is a bad idea.”[*]
“Three queens,” Anne whispered excitedly to Catherine. “Not Marguerite. Her.”
Anna looked back and forth between the two women. She hadn’t the slightest clue what they were talking about, and she knew deep in her heart she didn’t want to know. She pursed her lips together as tightly as she could and clenched her teeth, determined not to say another word.
“You have told us the truth, and now it is only fair we repay the favor,” Anne Boleyn was saying. “Lina—Catherine—told you we were here to do something important. In fact, a woman’s life depends on it.”
Anna said nothing, wishing to God and every saint she could think of that she had never left her room.
Her silence didn’t seem to deter Anne. “While I’m sure the three of us have many things in common, there is one thing we share that stands out.
We were all married to Henry, and none of us are anymore.
There’s a disturbing pattern there, don’t you think?
Five wives in eight years…it’s unnatural.
You know what he did to me. What he did to Lina. ”
Grudgingly, Anna nodded. She hadn’t wanted to be Henry’s fourth wife for myriad reasons, not least of all because the king’s marriages had a penchant for ending in funerals.
In truth, Anna hadn’t wanted to be the wife of any man at all.
That was why she’d falsified her own portrait to look more beautiful, why she’d pretended not to know English, why she’d worn the ugliest clothes she could find.
Her plan had worked, and Henry had been all too happy to exchange his awkward German bride for a beautiful young lady-in-waiting.
Anna had gotten exactly what she wished, plus a hefty allowance, and helped Henry save face.
“Did you know my cousin Katherine Howard? I heard she was one of your attendants.”
“Yes, I knew her,” Anna managed to say, wondering whether the words were her own or still some part of a spell.
“Do you think she will make the king happy?”
Slowly, Anna shook her head. “Nor do I think she will be happy with him.”
A part of her had always worried about little Katherine Howard.
The girl was nearly a decade younger than Anna and had seemed breezy and blithe, an unsuitable match for the mercurial king that Anna had come to know.
But Anna had escaped that life and had found her own happiness.
She tried to think about court as little as possible these days.
“And what do you think happens when Henry is not happy with his wife?” Anne asked, her dark eyes boring into Anna’s.
Anna knew the answer. She was living proof of it, as were the other two women in this room. “He will find a new one,” she said quietly.
Anne Boleyn smiled beatifically at her answer, and Anna was at once dazzled and terrified. “And that, my dear, is why you’re going to help us save Katherine Howard. The poor thing must be absolutely miserable.”
Skip Notes
* Here, I must disagree. At the very least, this is the best of Anne’s bad ideas yet.