Chapter 18
Lina
Two years slipped by in the space of a blink.
There was no time to notice the months vanishing, not with the Sisterhood’s work consuming their days, not to mention Lina’s university lessons and Anne’s work beside Dr. Al-Bashar.
Gisa’s network of mystics was growing slowly but steadily, and they had helped bring nearly one hundred women to Santa Cruz since that first trip to Orléans.
It was spring again in Spain, and Lina had come to love her new—or rather, old—home.
The warm weather paired with blossoming trees made each day feel like a fresh start, and though seasonal rains swept through the city, they always left fresh breezes and blue skies in their wake.
Lina enjoyed her walks to and from the university to their modest house in Madrid, furnished by the Sisterhood the year before when their rooms were needed for new arrivals.
The stone and white plaster kept away the heat in the summer, and Lina was fond of the salmon-colored tiles on the roof, even if a few of them were missing.
There was a garden for her, and Anne had stocked her room so full of books it resembled a library more than sleeping quarters.
She hadn’t felt so at home since she was a girl.
She returned to the house one golden morning, arms laden with flowers from the market, to find a letter in Marguerite’s distinctive looping handwriting. She placed the flowers on the kitchen table and opened the letter, a frown taking shape before she finished the last word.
News came in batches across the sea, and then again in batches from Marguerite.
She wrote that Henry had chosen a fourth wife and married Anna von Kleve, a twenty-four-year-old German noblewoman who hardly spoke English.
The move was calculated but not unexpected for someone like Henry.
Lina pitied her, recognizing another woman who was being used by men in their games of war and power.
From what she could tell, it was a marriage of convenience to shore up power against the pope, as the Duke of Kleves was leaning away from Catholicism. Germany and England together could make for a strong pair, offering a foothold for Henry on the Continent.
“This has Cromwell’s fingerprints all over it,” she murmured to herself.
She hated that that miserable old bastard was still playing puppets with Henry’s wives.
The king’s chief minister had been one of the key architects of Lina’s undoing as queen.
Cromwell had supported Henry’s marriage to Anne at first, used the new queen for his own purposes, then propagated Henry’s rumors and lies about her when she had become too independent to manage.
Lina returned her attention to the letter about Henry and Anna von Kleve to discover that not all was well for the newlyweds.
Henry had been expecting a greater beauty and is seeking an annulment, Marguerite wrote.
Lina’s frown deepened. Surely the king wouldn’t have given up yet another wife—four really was excessive, even for a king—for the mere value of appearance.
Henry hadn’t kept his own looks, and he had the audacity to claim that a woman half his age wasn’t attractive enough?
She was so shocked by the hypocrisy, she nearly missed the second-to-last line of the letter.
The king is anticipated to marry Katherine Howard before the summer is up. This could be our chance to regain a foothold in the English court.
From there, Marguerite concluded her letter simply. You are needed back in England. I’ll see to your travel arrangements.
Lina was glad Anne was not home yet to see the tear that slipped down her cheek at those words.
She did not want to return to miserable, godforsaken England.
Yes, Mary was there, and yes, Lina’s heart clenched every time she thought of her daughter.
She would give anything to bring Mary here, to immerse her in her motherland, to teach her Spanish, to show her the university and the hospital and all that they had built there.
Lina missed her child with every fiber of her being, a dull ache that never faded, not even for a moment.
But she didn’t miss England. She didn’t miss the damp and the cold.
She didn’t miss the food, or the wine, or the fog that seemed to cling to everything in London.
She didn’t miss the people who would rather watch a parade of queens be exiled and die than admit there was something wrong with their king.
A part of her had known that Madrid wasn’t permanent, that she served at the mercy of the Sisterhood.
But these last few years had been some of the happiest of her life, and Lina feared that nothing but pain awaited on the other side of the sea.
She heard the door open, recognizing Anne’s tread as she stepped inside. For a moment, she considered crumpling the parchment in her hand and throwing it into the hearth to burn in the next fire. But she couldn’t make her fist close.
“Marguerite has written,” she said, handing the letter to Anne when she walked into view. “We have a new mission.”
Anne took the letter and began to read, her breath catching when she reached the end.
“What’s the matter?” Lina was peering at her over the back of the letter. “You’ve gone stark white.”
“Katherine Howard is my cousin,” Anne said slowly.
Lina raised her brows. “Isn’t everyone in England someone’s cousin?”
“Kat is my seventeen-year-old cousin. I’ve known her since she was a babe in arms.”
“That can’t be right. She’s just a girl, and Henry is nearly fifty. He wouldn’t…” Lina trailed off, knowing full well Henry would. “It must be someone else.”
Anne shook her head. “Marguerite wouldn’t send us back if she didn’t know of the connection. Kat is just a child. Henry must have first met her when she was, what, ten? Twelve? She was always a happy, carefree girl, and now…”[*2]
Anne’s face twisted and she began pacing, unable to stand still.
“How dare he go after another member of my family? Henry sent Mary away, murdered George, stole Elizabeth’s right to the throne, and, for all intents and purposes, had me killed.
Now, having destroyed every Boleyn he could find, he has to go find one of the precious few people I still care about and destroy her too?
Kat won’t survive a year in court, I guarantee it.
She’s too young, too na?ve, to hold up in that place. ”
Lina felt her own fury, long dormant, rising. Henry was a poison, tainting everything he touched. And now he’d reached across the ocean to end the one pure, peaceful place Anne and Lina had.
A knock at the door startled both of them. Gisa didn’t bother with further propriety and stormed inside with her usual brash momentum.
No, Lina realized. This was something else. The mystic’s eyes were wide and too bright, like she hadn’t slept a wink, her hair more tousled than usual. And her hands…her hands shook as she clasped a piece of rolled parchment between them.
“I have dreamed my first great prophecy,” Gisa announced, her voice shaking nearly as much as her hands. Lina had never seen the girl anything less than composed, usually in that otherworldly way that seemed to suggest she could divine all the secrets of the universe.
Lina sat down at the small dining table and offered Gisa the seat beside her, but Gisa shook her head. “No. I must read this first.”
She unrolled the parchment, then looked between the two women. “These are the first words of my own I will have inked onto me, you understand. They are not binding, but they are true. They are a future, if not the future. And they are about you.”
Gisa cleared her throat and read.
Three queens shall save the one,
And yet the work remains undone.
The sixth has walked among the dead,
And knows the ways to keep her head.
So that when the king of England dies,
Three more queens shall one day rise.
Lina couldn’t name the feeling that shifted through her bones then. Fear? Foreboding? Fate? Whatever it was, it left her blood thrumming and her skin cold to the touch.
Gisa set the paper down on the table, her words still lingering in the air. “I know what is in that letter,” the mystic said, pointing to the note from Marguerite that Anne still held. “Or, at least I know enough. You are to go back to England.”
Lina managed to gather herself and nodded. “Marguerite believes Henry intends to wed Anne’s young cousin. Does this”—she pointed to the paper—“mean we will save Katherine?”
“I can’t tell you,” Gisa whispered. The mystic suddenly looked drained, as though delivering her prophecy had sapped her of all energy. “I’m afraid anything more I say or do could sway you in the wrong direction.”
Without warning, she launched herself at Anne, wrapping her in a tight embrace. “Here we must part. I did not see myself in this prophecy, which means I am not meant to go with you. But you will remember what I taught you of swordcraft.”
Anne’s arms went around Gisa, and she gave a strangled laugh. “Yes, I’ll remember.”
Gisa released her, then knelt, taking Lina’s hands with the same passion. “And you will remember that impatience can get you killed.”
“I taught you that,” Lina reminded her.
A smile flashed across Gisa’s face. “It was good advice.” She stood, backing away toward the door. “And it was good to be among you. I don’t know if our futures will align again, but I sincerely hope that they do.”
She left as abruptly as she had arrived, leaving Lina and Anne staring at the scrap of paper that could—or could not—determine their destinies.
Skip Notes
*1 I wish she had told me. As important as her other mission was, Lina made a superb teacher—fearsomely serious enough to keep every student in line and brilliant enough to gain their undying respect.
*2 Unfortunately, Anne had the right of it. Katherine Howard was the teenaged daughter of Anne’s uncle Lord Edmund Howard. (And, in a coincidence that should surprise no one, Edmund Howard’s cousin, Margery Wentworth, was the mother of Jane Seymour. The English court truly is a tangled web.)