Chapter 25
Anne
Anne was absolutely delighted by Anna von Kleve and was pleased to find that Marguerite’s reports hadn’t done the young woman justice.
It seemed no one had glimpsed the true Anna, at least not as she was away from court.
For all the complaints of her plainness, Anna was a lovely young woman.
Her face was round, sunny, and open, and she had a plump hourglass form that curved and softened in all the best places.
She smiled easily—once she got over her initial shock and terror—and her sense of compassion was finely tuned, so much so that she had agreed to help with Kat’s rescue with little persuasion.
The night of Anne and Lina’s arrival, the three former queens had stayed up talking late into the night, and even after Anne’s truth curse wore off, Anna admitted to her plot to escape her marriage from Henry.
The entire thing was brilliant, played so perfectly that Anna had walked away with her dignity, her head, and enough gold to last several lifetimes.
Moreover, Anne suspected that the Brigid Anna had mentioned was far more than just a companion.
She had met several such couples hidden away in the French and English courts and felt a pang of bittersweet happiness that one of Henry’s wives had found love.
Anna had invited them to stay, and the elder queens had accepted.
A month passed as Anne unearthed her family’s spell books and learned every intricacy of the glamours needed to get them into court.
After endless days of study, Anne felt confident that she could cast and sustain the spell, complicated though it may be.
Now, all they needed was an excuse to go to London.
“How I envy our host,” Anne said to Lina one morning. “Tucked away in this house, her lover in her bed and Henry’s coins in her purse.”
They sat in Anne’s childhood rooms, enjoying a breakfast of bread and porridge prepared by Mrs. Garthwaite.
Anne’s jealousy was tempered by her joy at being home after so many years away.
There was a certain strangeness to being here again without her family, and Anne tried to ignore the memories dancing at the corners of her vision—a young Mary bent over a book of child’s curses; boy George racing through the house with his tutor hot on his heels; Mother and Father smiling in the drawing room, dressed for company.
Lina took a sip of her tea, nodding as she looked out over the marshland surrounding the castle. “It does seem one of us managed to get it right.”
“Do you think we could secure an annulment for Kat?” Anne asked. She’d been pondering this for some time. “Anna did it so well—surely it could be done again.”
“Kat is at a disadvantage having caught the king’s eye on her own,” Lina pointed out. “He already finds her beautiful and interesting.”
Anne frowned, rubbing absently at the stump of her little finger. Henry had once thought the same of her, and that hadn’t ended well. “Perhaps we could bring their age difference into play. Kat is young, and surely her personality is no match for Henry’s.”
“We’ll find an angle,” Lina promised. “It will all be easier once we’re at court.”
And that was the sticking point. Anne was ready to complete the glamour, but they had no way to get into Kat’s inner circle.
They had considered creating false identities as noble ladies from the Continent—Anne from France and Lina from Spain—but the English court was so interconnected that it would be too easy for someone to pull apart their stories.
Besides, without husbands of standing, it would be impossible for the two of them to secure places as ladies-in-waiting in any noble household, let alone get close to the queen.
With that option off the table, talk had circled around to working in the kitchens or another part of the household staff.
There were drawbacks to this line of planning—not only that neither woman had lived a life of labor, but, more importantly, their access to the queen would be even more limited without the opportunity to move freely among the upper classes.
Seeking employment at the palace was ruled out as a nonstarter.
All of the roadblocks only served to make Anne more frustrated and impatient.
The only reason she hadn’t set off for London and damned the consequences was that the king and his new queen were on fall progress, due to arrive back at Hampton Court before Christmas.
Until then, there was little she could do but wait and think and practice her cursework until she knew the spells like her own heart.
A knock came at the door, followed by the appearance of their hostess.
“Good morning,” Anna said. “Would either of you fancy a stroll? The weather is fine, and I’ve felt cooped up after all this rain.”
It was the perfect distraction from an unsolvable problem, and Anne leaped to her feet, eager for fresh air and to burn off her nervous energy.
Lina waved her on, and Anne swept Anna out the door.
As always, Anna’s companion Brigid was with her, and Anne greeted the lady-in-waiting with a warm smile.
Brigid was stylish, clever, and kind, a near prodigy on the harpsichord, and a surprisingly cutthroat card player. Anne had grown fond of her too.
“Finally, a lovely day,” Anne said, taking the arms of the two ladies. “Shall we go get some mud on our skirts?”
“I can’t see why we’d do anything else,” Brigid replied. “It has been far too long since I made a proper mess.”
Anna laughed merrily. “She says that, but you should see her when she comes home from riding. Somehow the woman wears more dirt and dust than the horse.”
The day was indeed beautiful, the perfect autumn morning that offered summer’s warmth alongside the smell of freshly fallen leaves.
Anne had always thought that October was a particularly beautiful time at home.
Yes, the weather was changeable, with storms springing up on the horizon unannounced and sweeping across the marsh with a fury only Mother Nature could possess.
They had already seen several downpours roll through since she and Lina arrived.
But even in a storm, she loved watching the grasses sway in the wind, dancing to their own secret music.
As children, she and Mary had gone hunting for late-season wildflowers when they could escape their lessons, and there had never been anything better than finding a cozy corner in the library to curl up with a book.
Soon the heart of fall would arrive, painting the world in oranges, golds, and reds, and still those marsh grasses would swish, a sound Anne always associated with home.
Like children, the three women went running through the marshes, no care given to their shoes or skirts.
Anne showed them her favorite trees she’d climbed as a girl and the meadows of flowers that had only just begun to lose their rainbow hues.
They stayed out through the early afternoon, until Anne started to feel her face and neck turn pink despite the weakened sun.
Only when all their stomachs were growling and their fingers were green from flower picking did they begin the walk back to the castle.
“Will you be leaving soon?” Anna asked, sounding as though she hoped the answer would be no.
“I had thought we’d already be gone,” Anne admitted. “But we have not yet thought of a way into the palace and Kat’s circle. You were queen more recently than I—any advice?”
Anna thought for a moment. “The king paid very little attention to me and my household, but I expect things are different for Katherine. I wasn’t even allowed to pick most of my ladies-in-waiting and instead had them assigned to me based on their previous service and whose families were in favor at the moment.
Brigid was the only member of my own retinue who was permitted to stay. ”
The blonde’s face crinkled up in concentration. “Do you have any special skills, perhaps as a musician or artist? If Queen Katherine were to patronize your work, perhaps you could join her inner crowd. Anna was always bringing in new painters.”
That was a good idea, and one Anne hadn’t yet considered. Unfortunately, it was also moot, for while she and Lina were considered broadly accomplished women, neither of them had talents that could earn that sort of favor from the queen.
Anna stopped short, bringing her palms together in a clap that rattled the birds out of the grass.
“I’m a fool for not thinking of it sooner!
As the ‘king’s sister’ ”—all three of them made a face at the ridiculous nickname Henry had given her—“I’ll be invited to the Christmas festivities at Hampton Court.
You could come with me, and no doubt I will have plenty of opportunities to meet with the new queen, and in private too. ”[*]
Christmas was a long way off, and Anne’s first reaction was disappointment.
She had been impatient to get to Kat from the moment Marguerite’s letter arrived in Spain, and she’d now been delayed month after month.
But there was no better opportunity than the one in front of her.
It was a simple solution to a problem that had hounded her for weeks, and for that, Anne could have hugged sweet Anna von Kleve. So she did.
“You’re a genius, my dear girl,” she proclaimed. “You’re sure it’s not too much trouble?”
The younger woman shook her head. “Not at all. I will have to go, as much as I’d rather stay away from court. In fact, I would feel more comfortable returning knowing I was not the only ex-queen in attendance. And if it will help Kat, then it will all be worth it.”
“Perhaps I can perform a bit of magick and get Jane Seymour’s ghost to join us too,” Anne mused. She laughed when both Anna and Brigid turned pale and exchanged a worried look. “I tease, darlings. Just the living dead queens for this visit.”
Anna’s returning smile was only a little bit uneasy.
Skip Notes
* Because of her unique status in the English court, Anna would have unmatched access to the palace, the new queen, and the other people in Henry’s orbit. She could get Anne and Lina in places they could never go on their own, and no one would dare question her right to be anywhere or do anything.