Chapter 20
Lina
After endless weeks at sea, their ship finally limped into port in Brighton. For three days, Lina and Anne recovered their stomachs and land legs in a rented room, and then it was off to Hertfordshire and St. Margaret’s for the first time in almost four years.
Lina felt a small swell of homecoming when she saw the drab little convent nestled in its green acres, and the feeling helped ease the ache of tears behind her eyes that had lingered since her feet left Spanish soil.
Thanks to the work of Sister Edith and Sister Sarah, the grounds and house were in tidy order.
In the second-floor study, where Lina had spent so many days looking out over her garden and reading her books, a letter from Marguerite awaited them.
Henry is moving quickly, Marguerite warned.
Katherine is rumored to replace the queen.
She had included several pages of reports from the court, enough to give them insight into the major players, alliances, and politics that had shifted during their time in Spain.
Lina felt quite sure that despite Marguerite’s scheming, Anne wouldn’t allow Katherine to spend a moment more in Henry’s company if it could be helped, and she was proved right by her next words.
“Very well, then,” Anne said after reading the letter. “I know what Marguerite wants, but her goal is moot if Kat does not become queen. We must ensure Kat never gets near the crown.”
“And what of Gisa’s prophecy?” Lina asked. They had carried a copy of the mystic’s words with them to England, even though they’d both memorized every line. “She made it quite clear Katherine would be queen.”
“And she also said the future is not set in stone,” Anne argued. “Plenty of prophecies have not come true. I refuse to sit back and allow this one to do so.”
Lina didn’t press the point. “What do we know about Anna von Kleve?” she asked instead, shifting through the stack of papers on her desk. “Do we think there is a chance Henry will change his mind and keep up the marriage, even just for the sake of appearances?”
Anne snorted, grabbing pages of her own. “I think Henry is far past worrying about appearances.”
The women sat at either end of the study’s settee and read quietly for a few minutes, searching for clues in the Sisterhood missives from court that might offer a way to keep Kat out of Henry’s reach.
“All the reports point to Anna being rather uninspiring,” Anne said.
“She’s supposed to be odd, quiet, and dull.
Some say she couldn’t even speak English when she arrived, and she and the king appear to have nothing in common.
” She held up a piece of paper. “One lady writes that her husband heard the king has not consummated the union—that he cannot consummate due to his lack of attraction to his new wife.”
Lina found herself offended on the young woman’s behalf. Surely there was more to Anna von Kleve than what the gossip of court made her out to be. And besides, it was far more likely Anna was repulsed by Henry than the other way around.
She shared some observations from her own reading. “In better news, the king seems to be unhappy with Cromwell. He did arrange the marriage, and Henry blames him for having found such an unsatisfactory bride. At the very least, it should be easy to remove him from Henry’s favor.”
Cromwell had made his reputation and his fortune off the backs of the women he’d trotted out for his king, and it was high time someone put a stop to it.
At age fifty-five, he had finally achieved the post of Lord Great Chamberlain after getting his start as a lowly lawyer in the House of Commons.
It would be a long way to fall. Lina took dark pleasure in imagining the man stripped of his powers and rank—she wanted him to feel exactly what she had felt when he helped arrange her exile.
But getting even with Cromwell wouldn’t solve the problem of Anna and Kat.
Lina rested her chin on her fist and thought aloud.
“With Prince Edward alive, Henry has no motivation to keep Anna von Kleve as his queen to produce another heir. We must work under the assumption that an annulment is imminent. He’ll have to be diplomatic to avoid angering the Germans, but it’s only a matter of time. ”
“At least she won’t be beheaded,” Anne grumbled.
“What about your family?” Lina asked. “Is there anyone we could appeal to? Anyone who could step in and take Kat away from court?”
Even before Anne shook her head, Lina had known it was a foolish question.
If Henry had decided he wanted Katherine Howard as his next bride, there was little anyone could do to deny him, least of all the disgraced Boleyns.
During their marriage, the king had invited beautiful noblewomen to court and into his bed—even happily married ones—and neither the women, their husbands, nor their families could stop the practice. What the king wanted, he took.
“Kat’s father, Lord Edmund, is dead, but even before that he was a useless, spineless creature.
He spent his fortune—and his wife’s—and all but abandoned his children.
” Anne’s face twisted into a sneer. “But our uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, is worse. He was just as gleeful when I married Henry as he was when I was convicted of treason. He will do whatever serves him, no matter whom he hurts. It’s no wonder he and Henry get on so well. ”
“Oh, I know the duke,” Lina replied bitterly. “And I think we ought to add him to our list of people in need of a reckoning.”
Norfolk had been one of Henry’s supporters during the dissolution of her marriage, but Lina’s hatred for the man had started long before he meddled in royal affairs.
His wife, Elizabeth, was a dear friend who served as one of her ladies-in-waiting.
Norfolk was an abusive husband, and it was not unusual for Lizzy to be wearing long sleeves and high collars even when they were out of season or style.
The duke had taken a lover near the end of Lina’s queenship and sent his wife away, seizing her jewels and fine clothes and bestowing them upon his mistress.
To this day, Lizzy lived separate from her family, her reputation and her status in tatters.
“It would bring me great joy to teach my uncle his place,” Anne said, that feral, ruthless look in her eyes once more. Lina hadn’t seen it much in Spain, but she wondered sometimes if that look was always there—the witch hiding behind the woman.
“So we pit Cromwell and Norfolk against each other,” Lina suggested. “They have long been enemies in the battle for the king’s favor. Cromwell arranged the marriage with Anna von Kleve, and the Duke of Norfolk no doubt wants his young niece on the throne instead.”
It was a risky play, given that women’s lives hung in the balance.
Riskier still since neither Lina nor Anne could set foot in court.
Their work would have to be done entirely in the shadows, carried out through carefully worded letters and well-placed rumors and the occasional flat-out lie.
But if Cromwell and Norfolk were toppled, both Anna and Katherine could go free, and Henry would be left alone once more.
Yes, Lina’s mind was set. She looked at Anne and grinned, not knowing that a witchlight burned in her eyes too. “Let us see if we can’t slay two monsters with a single sword.”
As the days passed, Lina discovered that there was a clear advantage to knowing your enemies well…and having a witch on your side.
Though her knowledge of court life was a bit rusty, Lina had been born and bred a diplomat. During her time as queen, she had had the misfortune of spending copious amounts of time with both Cromwell and Norfolk and knew well what made them strong and what made them crumble.[*2]
“We make everyone think that Cromwell has gone too far, that he chose a bride for his own purposes without thought for his king,” Lina dictated to Anne, who was taking notes from behind the study’s desk.
“We spread rumors that he ignored the king’s wishes and pursued the marriage and refused an earlier annulment. ”
Lina smiled grimly. “Better yet, we make sure everyone knows Henry is unable to consummate the marriage. We may as well cast doubt on his manhood in the process.”
Anne’s pen flew across the page, her laughter covering the scratching of the nib.
“As for Norfolk, we dredge up every cruel, base act he’s ever committed.
We remind people what he’s done to his wife.
We work in mentions of any of his political or battle failures, especially with France, since we know how Henry has always hated losing to the French.
And we focus on his connection to you, a disgraced traitor and adulteress. ”
“That’s rude,” Anne interrupted, not looking up from her papers.
“Perhaps, but it is effective.” Lina’s mind was racing ahead.
“We write to members of Parliament and the Privy Council. We make sure letters fall into the hands of spies or are accidentally discarded in the presence of enemies. We put the Sisterhood to work whispering in their husbands’ and lovers’ ears.
And then, if we are both very clever and very lucky, we’ll have run both men out of favor before the summer is up. ”
Lina’s expertise in politics was complemented by Anne’s gifts of witchery.
Though she had to keep the spell books she’d brought back from Spain hidden—magick would have made the nuns uneasy—Anne was able to cobble together a series of curses for the task ahead.
First, she used a spell to draw out Lina’s memories or her own of the handwritings of various men of court, including both their rivals.
Second, though the curse was tiring, Anne’s magick allowed her to transcribe letters in the style of others, her copies perfect from greeting to signature.
She wrote dozens of letters in a matter of a week, and Lina secured a local messenger to ferry the letters to the city every other day.
By the end of May, Anne’s fingers were stained black from nail to knuckle with ink, and Lina had worn a threadbare patch in the study’s rug from pacing as she crafted drafts of the letters.
Together, they had set both Cromwell and Norfolk up for multiple counts of treason and humiliated Henry as often as they feasibly could.
But despite dispatching nearly one hundred letters to the most powerful people in England, there was still no guarantee that they were any closer to saving Kat from becoming Henry’s next wife, and Lina could tell Anne was growing anxious.
“You know what we must do next,” Anne told Lina one night at dinner.
Lina had known this conversation was coming, and she set aside her fork with a sigh. “You can’t go to court,” she said in her firmest tone, knowing full well she wouldn’t win the argument. “You will be recognized and all will be ruined.”
“Witches don’t get caught,” Anne retorted.
“And yet you’ve already been beheaded once. I’d hate for it to happen again.”
Anne looked at Lina across the candlelit table, her expression determined. “If I don’t go to her, no one will. Kat is just a girl—my own blood—and she is alone. The least I can do is try to talk to her, to warn her of Henry’s intentions and encourage her to get out while she still can.”
“You are that afraid for her?” Lina knew how awful Henry could be, with his swinging moods and his derisive remarks.
He wasn’t a husband she’d wish on anyone.
But marrying the king wasn’t quite a death sentence.
Lina had lasted twenty-some years, after all, and surely Henry wouldn’t live that much longer.
Anne pushed around the last few bites of salted pork on her plate.
“Maybe my little cousin has grown into a levelheaded political genius like you. But more likely, she’s just as impulsive and immature as I was at seventeen, and if that’s the case, I cannot just sit here and pray that our plan succeeds.
It’s a risk, but you once took an even bigger risk for me. ”
Even though Lina longed to argue, to point out all the flaws in Anne’s thinking, she couldn’t. Wasn’t the simplest, truest goal of the Sisterhood to help other women? Katherine Howard was a woman who needed help, and Anne was right—no one else could save her.
“If you die, I shall be very upset with you,” Lina finally said.
She meant it. After all these years together, any resentment she had held toward the other woman had evaporated, and she had become inexplicably fond of the witch.
Where once she had seen an enemy, now she saw her most trusted friend.
Their shared history felt like a gift rather than a burden, for who else could understand all they had been through?
Anne beamed, as though she had heard all the unsaid things Lina kept close in her heart. “Then I shall do my best not to die.”
Skip Notes
*1 This feels rather unfair as I, tragically, have yet to gain control over the weather.
*2 All of Cromwell’s power was tied up in his increasingly radical attempts at religious reformation.
He had been a convenient ally when Henry needed to create the Church of England, but now Cromwell’s zealotry could prove to be an Achilles’ heel.
Though I was not consulted on this plan of theirs—which came very close to going against my orders to bring Kat to our side—I cannot say it was a bad one.