Chapter 31
Anna von Kleve
“I couldn’t blame her,” Anna told Brigid as they curled up together beneath the covers that night. “Yes, she is young and hotheaded, but she is in love. And she only wanted to make sure her lover was kept safe.” She kissed Brigid’s nose. “I can relate to that.”
Brigid wove her arms around Anna, cradling her head with one hand and resting her other on her hip. “I’d hate to think you wouldn’t have a sense of self-preservation if you were in her situation.”
“And leave you to pay for my mistakes? Never.”
In a way, Anna knew she had been lucky to fall in love with a woman instead of a man.
Women were expected to be close, to be with one another day and night, to keep each other’s confidences tucked away from the world of men.
No one had ever batted an eye when she and Brigid were alone behind closed doors.
Of course, things weren’t as simple as all that, for Anna didn’t dare think about what the consequences would be if they were ever found out.
But still, she felt oddly lucky to be lying in her lover’s arms with no one beyond their room the wiser.
Brigid was still frowning over Kat’s dilemma. “Doesn’t it make things horribly complicated to try to save them both?”
In truth, Anna wasn’t sure. She had floated the idea to pacify Kat when their conversation started to go sideways, but she had no idea how difficult it would be to get a member of the king’s privy chamber out of the country with no one noticing.
“There are many things I prefer to leave up to Anne and Lina,” Anna admitted. “They have the stomach for those kinds of schemes, whereas I am afraid I do not.”
Brigid’s gaze was knowing. “Like with John Lassells?”
Precisely. Anna had been horrified to learn that Anne Boleyn had broken the mind of a man as though snapping twigs off a tree.
Even though she knew Lassells had meant Kat harm, she couldn’t help but feel a gut-twisting mixture of pity and guilt over the man’s fate.
Who would be next? Lina had told her about how they had plotted to have Cromwell removed from power, and while Anna couldn’t say she had been sorry to hear of his death—he’d been a bitter, power-hungry man—she couldn’t imagine being the one orchestrating it.
There were so many others who stood in their way: Archbishop Cranmer, the Duke of Norfolk, Henry himself.
Would Anne and Lina destroy them all? Perhaps they deserved destruction, but Anna worried about how she would reconcile her own soul with what would come to pass. [*1]
“Sometimes I think life was better before they showed up on our doorstep,” Anna admitted, keeping her voice low in case some curse of Anne’s allowed the witch to overhear. “It was less exciting, surely, but it was simpler.”
Brigid nodded. “You could always leave, you know. Give them money and help them secure positions at court. We could be home together by the New Year. But I don’t think you or I could live with that.”
Anna had had the same idea more times than she dared to admit. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help Kat—she did. But the secrecy and the stress were starting to weigh on her, and all she wanted was to be at one of her estates painting a silver dawn with Brigid by her side.
And yet something in her told her to stay.
She was intrigued by the work of the Hellebore Sisterhood, for all that she could also see it had its flaws.
She longed to be part of something again, and—save for Brigid—she had felt so lonely since she left Germany for England.
Even though there were moments, many of them, when Anne and Lina made her heart stop or her head spin, they had made her part of a bigger dream and a bigger community.
Besides, Anna knew she couldn’t bow out now, not with Kat’s life at risk.
“We’ll stay,” she told Brigid. “We’ll help Kat escape, and then I promise we’ll live the quiet life we’ve always wanted.”
Brigid’s smile was slow and full of sleep—she could doze off in a second once her head hit the pillow, no matter how important their conversation might be.
Anna took that sleepy smile as a challenge and pressed her lips against Brigid’s, instantly lost in the heady rush of the kiss.
She hoped that feeling, the flash of fire that ran from her head to her toes, would never fade away.
“Don’t fall asleep just yet,” she whispered, and Brigid kissed her back.
After days of Christmas feasting, it was finally time to put their plan into action.
Anna had gone over the strategy so many times she could have recited it in her sleep.
They would return to Hever Castle, as it was one of the more remote properties in Anna’s name and a fair distance from court, making it harder for Henry to travel to and fro during the winter months.
Anna would volunteer to have Kat entrusted into her care for the confinement, for Kat’s mother had passed and she wasn’t particularly close with any other female relatives, save Grandmam, who would be informed of their plot.
Meanwhile, Kat had been tasked with getting word to Thomas that he needed to leave court.
His obligations to the king throughout the holidays made it difficult to escape, but he was to invent an emergency at the soonest possible moment and flee south to Kent to await further instruction.
Even with Cranmer in the know, the women felt they had a few weeks at their disposal to plan a proper escape.
Lina had been making discreet inquiries as to the current location of Francis Dereham, the other man who had been mentioned by John Lassells as being involved with Kat, but so far there was no sign of him.
This was a help, as Cranmer would need someone besides Mistress Hall to corroborate her brother’s story now that Lassells was out of reach.
Still, Anna couldn’t shake the trepidation that clung to her like a wet cloak.
There were too many variables, too many people who knew bits and pieces—or all—of Kat’s secrets.
The moment Anna had been informed of King Henry’s interest in a marriage, she had begun plotting her way out.
She’d had over a year to walk through each scenario and test each idea before she had to put her plans into practice, and even then, she had been frightened every moment of every day.
A foreign bride caught sleeping with another woman and lying to the king?
Anna couldn’t imagine what kind of violent, humiliating execution would have been dreamed up for crimes like that.
While Kat’s transgressions were less complex, that didn’t make her any less vulnerable to a swift and ignoble death.
But this time, they didn’t have a year to plan—they had two weeks.
Worst of all, Anna was finally due for an audience with Henry today.
She had managed to make herself scarce at the majority of the holiday festivities, exchanging a few words with him here and there and largely avoiding his notice.
But he had invited her for luncheon, and the summons had put a pit in Anna’s stomach.
That pit turned into a gaping abyss when Anne demanded to go with her, the look on her face predatory despite her glamour.
Anna didn’t entirely trust the witch not to kill Henry on sight[*2]—despite Anne’s many promises she would do no such thing—though a tiny part of her did consider that Henry’s untimely death would make their mission quite a bit easier.
On the walk to Henry’s suite, Anna checked at least a dozen times that Anne’s magick hadn’t failed and that she still wore the face of Genevieve d’Toulouse.
Each time she looked over her shoulder, Anne’s smile grew until the sly bent of it alone seemed to scream that she was Anne Boleyn.
It was the same smile Anne had always had in her portraits, as though she knew the world’s greatest secret and she’d never, ever tell.
Anna was sure the king would recognize it—how could a husband stand before his wife and not see her?
Then again, that was exactly what Henry had done with her for six long months.
At last, they arrived at Henry’s chambers.
Anna had thought her rooms were opulent, but she had forgotten that Henry had a weakness for showy, decadent décor.
The gold-edged tapestries alone must have cost a fortune, never mind the exquisite French paintings and velvet-upholstered furniture.
The value of a single room in his suite—a corner of a room, really—could have fed and clothed an entire village for at least a year.
Anna wondered just how low the treasury was these days.
She was seated in a high-backed chair stitched all over with pinpricks of silver thread, while Anne as Genevieve sat a few feet behind her, the dutiful chaperone.
When Henry entered the room, both women stood and curtsied deeply, and Anna could have sworn she heard the witch whispering something under her breath.
Whatever it was, the swish of satin and silk whisked it away.
This wasn’t the first time Anna had seen Henry on this visit, but in the half a year they’d been apart, his health had deteriorated even further.
He reminded her of the last ember in a fire—ruddy and distended and seconds away from crumbling into dust. He moved slowly across the room, favoring his bad leg more than before, and was winded by the time he reached her.
“My dear Anna,” Henry said, taking her hand and pulling her up from her curtsy. “Welcome back to Hampton Court.”
“It is lovelier here than ever,” Anna replied, making sure her German accent came through. She knew Henry desired the compliment and was rewarded with a smirk from her ex-husband.
“And to think,” he said, pride evident in his tone, “this had once been languishing under the care of the incompetent Cardinal Wolsey.”
Anna nodded, having heard this insult plenty of times during her short marriage. “Indeed. You’ve been a far better steward.”