Chapter 9
Anne
Anne’s convalescence dragged on longer than she would have liked.
What remained of her missing finger still ached, though it was healing well enough.
More than anything, it itched, and Anne itched too, the confines of the convent drawing her skin too tight over her bones and making her restless and agitated.
Sister Edith and Sister Sarah made every overture of companionship, but Anne knew she had never been built for a small or simple life, and that was the fear she butted up against day after day in Hertfordshire.
The fear of being no one, of doing nothing, was just as terrifying as facing the executioner’s block.
Both spelled the end of life as she knew it, and though she had managed to come to terms with the fact that she was no longer queen, Anne would never accept that she was powerless.
And yet, some days, she felt powerless. Her magick was slow to return to its full strength, and even when Anne could feel the flicker of lightning back in her veins, something held her back from using her bloodletting knife—the pain in her hand, perhaps, or the memory of the executioner’s axe biting into the neck of her body double.
Whatever it was, she found herself unwilling to sacrifice more than a drop of blood here and there for the smallest spells.
Anne could have gotten by without her magick, even if it felt like losing another limb.
But gone was her influence, her connection to the English and European courts.
Gone was her life. Marguerite had said she would send for Anne and Lina when it was safe for them to travel without fear of exposing their identities or the Sisterhood.
[*] That meant they weren’t even allowed to go to Hatfield Palace, and Anne chafed against the distance between herself and Elizabeth.
She thought of running away, of stealing a sack of supplies and an ample purse.
She could abscond with Elizabeth and flee to Scotland.
She could go in search of her parents or her sister and try to rebuild her life.
Or, and this fantasy was the most tempting, she could return to the city and make Henry Tudor wish he were the one who was dead.
Lina seemed content to tend her garden and read her books, but Anne couldn’t stomach the waiting.
She took to walking the long road between the convent and town, pacing the miles until the stone and dirt wore her shoes down to shreds.
Most days, her sanity felt balanced between walking and screaming, so whenever she could, Anne walked.
When it rained too hard to go out, she screamed.
Oh, she was glad to be alive. But to be alive was to be angry, to hold space for all the wrongs and cruelties done to her, and cooped up in Hertfordshire, there was no place for all her anger to go. And so, by the end of July, her shoes were ruined and her throat was raw.
And still, no letter from Marguerite.
Anne knew she was a miserable houseguest, that Lina likely regretted saving her life more and more with every passing day. But she couldn’t stop herself from being sharp and furious. Couldn’t hide that she was coming apart at the seams.
As summer wore on, Lina sought Anne out less and less, until they only saw each other in passing at meals. Anne even gave up the pretense of her cover as a nun, avoiding the convent’s chapel though she knew it made the other women wonder.
And then finally, finally, Marguerite wrote.
Anne saw the letter first and tore it open.
My dearest friends,
I hope you are well, and that Anne has made a full recovery. I’ve arranged passage on a ship crossing from England to Spain this fall. There will be work for you here in spades, that I can promise you. And it will be good to be among friends once more.
A few sparse details followed, but it was enough. Anne was thrilled to have a purpose, a plan, a way to stave off that crushing, screaming helplessness.
And the postscript sent her running to Lina in the garden.
P.S. I think we have been cautious long enough. Take care to go see your daughters—in secret, Anne! Lina, do not let her kidnap Elizabeth—before you depart.
For all that Lina had seemed a paragon of horticultural patience this summer, the sudden shift in their plans had the older woman snapping back into her former royal self.
“Well, don’t dawdle,” she’d said to Anne after skimming the letter. She stood from her crouch beside her plants, stretching tall and managing to look regal even under a straw hat. “Fetch the horses.”
Anne did not, in fact, know how to fetch the horses, and half an hour of the morning was wasted by her and Lina arguing over who would go to the farm neighboring the convent to collect their transportation.
In the end, they went together, only to learn there were no sidesaddles and they’d be riding like men.
There was no dignity left, it seemed. But that mattered little, for Elizabeth was waiting.
Anne knew they couldn’t make contact with their daughters, and she didn’t have it in her to concoct some sort of disguise spell so they could interact under the cover of magick.
Even if she could work the curse—a big if at the moment—it felt too much like lying, and besides, she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t sweep Elizabeth up in her arms and run away the first moment she could, despite Marguerite’s instructions. Best to avoid temptation.
They set out at a gentle trot, and the horses soon ate up the miles between the convent and the palace, the English countryside passing in a blur of blue sky and fields just beginning to yield to August’s palette of gold and orange.
In the distance, Hatfield Palace began to rise above the gentle hills.
The redbrick walls formed a quadrangle, with gardens and a courtyard coming into view at the center.
Anne tried to imagine Elizabeth playing beneath the soaring trees of the grounds, a banner of auburn hair flying out behind her.
She blinked, and the vision became real as a little girl came racing out the front door, a beleaguered-looking governess on her heels.
Anne and Lina drew up the horses, slowing to a walk before stopping in a copse of trees just beyond the grounds.
From their distance, it was impossible to hear any conversation, but Anne caught snatches of Elizabeth’s laughter on the breeze.
Her eyes went wide, then narrow as she tried to capture every detail, shocked to find how much just a few months had changed her baby.
Elizabeth was taller, moving more assuredly, and Anne realized her third birthday was little more than a month away.
She gave little care to her clothes, leaping through mud puddles from yesterday’s rain and dashing into the bushes to evade capture by her governess.
The wildness of childhood was upon her, a freedom she would only taste for a few short years before her station forced her into a life of careful words and restrained behavior.
Even though Anne knew the merits of education and comportment, part of her wished for Elizabeth to be like this always, running free against the wind.
Not for the first time, Anne wondered if Elizabeth had any trace of power in her blood.
It had been around this age that Anne’s grandmother had sat the Boleyn girls down and begun their lessons…
but who would teach Elizabeth about the gift?
From here, Elizabeth looked half fey, a redheaded pixie child full of pure magick.
Anne wouldn’t have been surprised if her daughter had inherited the gift, and it was equally important she learn how to use her powers and how to disguise them.
Anne felt as though a hand had clenched around her heart at the thought.
Her breathing faltered and hitched, then turned to a cough.
Lina patted her on the back. “Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes flickering between Anne, Elizabeth, and the open door of the palace, as though willing Mary to appear.
“No,” Anne answered honestly, tears welling in her eyes from either the coughing or the sight of Elizabeth or both.
Lina nodded, seeming to understand what Anne left unsaid.
They waited there for over an hour, each lost in their own thoughts as the horses grazed.
Finally, after Elizabeth had been shuttled inside—covered head to toe in mud—Anne felt her entire body sag.
The moments Anne had spent drinking in Elizabeth’s joy had been like catching the first raindrop after a hundred-year drought.
Glorious, sweet, fleeting, and not nearly enough.
She felt as thirsty as she had before—more so, even.
She could only imagine how Lina managed to cobble together years of these tiny flashes of motherhood without breaking her own heart.
Anne’s was already threatening to shatter.
Would it be painful to go abroad, knowing Elizabeth would be farther away, growing up day by day without her? Of course. But it was more painful to think of passing through life as a phantom, haunting this stand of trees, hoping for a glimpse of the daughter she had all but lost.
There had been no sign of Mary, but even though evening approached, bringing a crisper bite to the air, she didn’t suggest they leave. Lina needed a raindrop as badly as Anne had, even though it would hurt all the more when the moment was gone.
“Just a little longer,” Lina said quietly. “Sometimes she takes a walk before dusk. She always liked this time of day ever since she was a baby. It was the only time she’d go to sleep without crying.”
And so they waited. And just when Lina’s shoulders slumped and she turned back toward the horses, Mary stepped through the front door.
Anne grabbed Lina’s arm and pointed, then watched as Lina’s face lit with a haunted sort of happiness.
Anne followed her gaze to where Mary paced neat lines around the courtyard, occasionally stopping to pluck a stray leaf from the garden hedge.
Although Mary’s hair was covered, Anne saw a few coppery strands escape her hat and was struck for the first time by how much Elizabeth and Mary resembled each other.
From their red-hued hair to their fair skin to their slim builds, it was clear the two were sisters despite their seventeen-year age gap.
She thought of her own Mary, her elder sister who had always been so gentle, so lovely.
They had traveled the world together, and at every turn, Mary had been there, a calm port for all of Anne’s storms. Whereas some sisters would have been frustrated by their foil, Anne always felt grateful to have a better half.
Even after everything that happened with Henry, Mary had simply acknowledged her own limits and walked away.
Now Anne wasn’t even certain where Mary lived, if she was alive and well and happy, and the realization struck like a blow to her stomach. Worse, she realized that Mary was probably better off, safe from the stain of Anne’s legacy. Perhaps Elizabeth was too.
On the palace grounds, Mary stopped her pacing and gazed off into the countryside, almost in their direction, a contemplative expression on her face.
Anne wondered if the girl sensed they were there, if she could feel the pull of her mother’s love.
Just as suddenly, Mary looked away and hurried up the stairs back into the palace.
Lina stared after her, the same longing, the same thirst that Anne had felt written across her features.
“Do you think they like one another?” Anne asked. After Elizabeth had been born, Mary was sent to be part of the infant princess’s household, which Mary couldn’t have been happy about, not when she had once been a princess herself.
Lina didn’t take her eyes off where Mary had been. “In one of the last letters we exchanged, Mary said she’d grown very fond of Elizabeth, despite…” Lina trailed off, seeming to think better of her words. “Despite her feelings about you.”
Anne acknowledged this with a wry smile. “I don’t blame her for hating me. But it does make me happy to know they have each other. It’s a bit like the two of us, isn’t it?”
The elder queen focused her blue eyes on Anne once more. “You mean that we have been forced into exile with the woman who should be our sworn enemy?”
“Should be being the important distinction. For I think you and I are no longer enemies.” They weren’t friends—Anne wouldn’t have dared use that term—but they’d survived the last few months together with no bloodshed. That had to be worth something.
Lina dipped her head in acknowledgment. “We are no longer enemies.”
Their ride back was quiet, dusk closing in quickly. And when Anne went to sleep that night, her heart—that heavy, dark, furious thing that only seemed to pulse in her chest when she let herself scream—felt a little bit lighter.
Skip Notes
* Perhaps I should have sent for them right away, knowing now how the waiting tortured Anne. But Lina’s rescue plan was daring at best, damned at worst, and I had to wait to be certain Henry didn’t suspect foul play.