Chapter 26
Anna von Kleve
With all the excitement of the past few weeks, Anna had hardly been able to find time to paint.
One November morning she finally sat at her easel, looking out at the gray skies and the frosted sea of grass and trees that stretched away from Hever Castle.
She’d grown used to life in the old Boleyn home, used to the creaks in the stairs and the way the marsh birds sang the sun to sleep.
Perhaps she felt at home here simply because of Anne Boleyn herself, who had come to feel like an older sister, albeit one with magick and a penchant for revenge.
Queen Catherine—Lina, Anna always had to remind herself—remained somewhat distant, though she was always polite.
Anna got the sense that the eldest queen had greater trepidation about returning to court, though she pasted on a smile and helped with the planning.
Helped was in fact an understatement, as Lina’s sharp mind always seemed two or three steps ahead.
She had plotted the trip to London down to the last detail, and despite Anna’s own nerves, she felt surprisingly confident to be smuggling in two presumed-dead queens in her entourage.
Anna dipped her brush into the silver paint she only used on the rarest of occasions, limning the feathered grass and nearly bare trees with a tinge of ice.
It was one of her better paintings; she had always been stronger with landscapes than portraits.
Brigid had laughed the first time Anna tried to paint her, and in fairness Anna had made her lover look far more like a golden-feathered hen than a beautiful woman.
As if summoned by Anna’s thoughts, Brigid padded into the room, her slippered feet scuffing against the floor. She paused beside the painting. “It’s very good, my love,” she said, giving Anna’s shoulder a squeeze. “We might just make a da Vinci out of you yet.”
Anna flushed with pleasure. “It is not that good.”
Brigid sat in the chair next to Anna’s. She wore her dressing gown over her night chemise, and her cheeks were rosy with sleep. Anna thought it was too bad she couldn’t paint that portrait. It certainly was a lovely thing to be in love and be loved in return.
“What did I tell you?” Brigid scolded in her teasing way. “When someone gives you a compliment, you say thank you. Men have no time for false modesty, so we shouldn’t either. Do you think da Vinci would have been coy about his talent?”
“You’re starting to sound like a member of the Sisterhood,” Anna observed.
This time Brigid was the one to blush. “You think so?” She bit her lip and looked at Anna. “That isn’t a bad thing, is it?”
Anne and Lina had told them all about the Hellebore Sisterhood and how their friend, the princess of France, was orchestrating a movement to improve the lives of women all across Europe.
[*] It sounded lovely, though Anna wondered if that movement would accept someone like her or Brigid.
Their true lives had been lived in secret, even among their closest friends and family.
Anna had kept the relationship from her fellow queens, though she feared they were clever enough to see through her.
Would other women of the Sisterhood extend a hand if they knew the truth?
Or would that part of her always have to be separate? Hidden from everyone but Brigid?
Still, the pragmatic part of Anna knew that progress was progress, and anything that helped balance the power between men and women was worth fighting for.
Perhaps if things had been different—been better—she wouldn’t have been shipped off to England to marry a monster of a man, just for the sake of politics.
Moreover, she wouldn’t have been forced to rely solely on her wits to survive a marriage that other women had not.
“The Sisterhood will do good in the world,” Anna assured Brigid. “I’m glad we know of it and can help our friends. And that we can help Kat—she deserves far better than a life next to Henry.”
Brigid nodded. Both of them had felt guilty about leaving Katherine Howard in the lion’s den.
Kat was a beautiful, charming girl, but she was trapped in a game played by men who cared little for the casualties they inflicted.
Henry had seen her, Henry had wanted her, and the rest was paperwork and payoffs.
Anna had been so glad to escape that she hadn’t dared look back, at least not until her predecessors came knocking.
“You…you don’t think Her Highness Anne will be caught using her magick?” Brigid asked. “That we’ll be found out?”
Anna had no answer for that. She really had no idea what Anne Boleyn was capable of. In truth, as much as she liked and admired Anne and Lina, there were moments when they both frightened her to her core.
That had been Anna’s last quiet day, and from that moment forward, there was little time for painting.
Gowns had to be fitted, trunks packed, and elaborate backstories built about Anna’s newest ladies-in-waiting, Genevieve d’Toulouse and Mariana de Villaverde.
She and Brigid taught them each a few key words and phrases of German to be safe, in case they needed to communicate in a language few courtiers used.
The morning they were scheduled to leave for London, Anna found two strangers in her library.
One woman was slim with dark blond hair—pretty, though her pallid complexion placed her out of the running for a true beauty.
The other was brunette verging on gray with a smattering of freckles across her nose that lent youth to her otherwise matronly appearance.
Anna’s surprise must have shown on her face, because the blond woman clapped her hands together merrily.
“She doesn’t recognize us!” she crowed to her companion.
Anna’s brow furrowed. She knew that voice…
“Yes, dear one, it’s us,” the blonde—Anne Boleyn—said, sounding terribly pleased with herself. “I will accept congratulations on an excellent glamour.”
Anna had known the witch planned to cast her disguise spells, but Anna hadn’t expected it to be so…
lifelike. Despite having spent nearly every day of the last two months with these women, she hadn’t recognized them at all.
If she really squinted—and she did—she could see Anne’s mischievous gray eyes and the patient, if slightly taciturn set of Lina’s mouth.
“How does it work?” Anna asked, mesmerized by the power of the glamour. She had an urge to reach out and touch Anne’s face, to see if she could feel the magick.
If possible, the witch looked even more smug. “Most curses need only blood and a knife, but a glamour requires substance to fuel it. I had to collect hair from women with the color and style I planned to re-create, along with their skin.”
“Their skin!” Anna repeated, suddenly aghast. “What did you—how did you—”
Anne-not-Anne waved a hand. “Done through a scratch of a nail, nothing more sinister.”
Anna looked to Lina for confirmation, but the eldest queen merely shrugged, which offered little reassurance.
Anna scanned the women up and down, observing that Anne hadn’t changed their body types, or magicked herself a new pinkie finger.
Anne saw her notice and clasped her hands with what seemed like a bit of chagrin.
“A new limb is hard to manage, and I figure no one would expect me to be missing a finger anyway,” she said. “But otherwise, it’s quite impressive, isn’t it?”
Anna nodded. “I wouldn’t have known you,” she admitted.
“Nor we you,” Lina added, giving Anna a once-over of her own. “Was this what you were like while you were Henry’s wife?”
Anna looked down at her own disguise. With some reluctance, she had dug up the bulky, ill-fitting dresses she’d worn while at court.
They were all overly modest and in a series of colors that clashed awfully with her hair and skin tones.
They were also very effective—her style may have drawn the attention and derision of her attendants, but it had also successfully repelled her husband for six months.
Anna gave a small smile. “Soon I’ll be stumbling over my English and looking bemused by everyone and everything around me. I trust you won’t be offended by having such a bumbling lady to serve.”
“You are a true artist,” Anne proclaimed, walking over and cupping Anna’s cheeks. “And a clever one on top of that. I am very much looking forward to seeing your transformation, for I know the woman beneath.”
For so long, Anna’s ruse had seemed like a burden, a heavy veneer over her true self.
The masquerade had been necessary and fruitful, but truthfully Anna had hoped to never again take up the mantle of Anne von Kleve, the queen so dull and ugly that she was the laughingstock of England.
But with Brigid, Anne, and Lina by her side, it all felt a bit more like a game, a trick they were playing together on the world.
And that, she thought, might be rather enjoyable indeed.
Skip Notes
* This was, of course, unsanctioned, but then again everything Anne and Lina had done since returning to England was.
And anyway, the Hellebore Sisterhood had truly grown outside of my control, a deep-rooted vine twining ever higher, ever deeper, into the pillars of society.
It was what I had always hoped for, but the growth still keeps me up at night, wondering if the consequences of all I have built and nurtured will catch up with me.