Chapter 29 #2
Returning to England was like watching a parade of men—nay, villains—from Anne’s past. They were everywhere: Cromwell, Norfolk, Henry, and now Cranmer.
The archbishop of Canterbury was another powerful reformer who had been in Henry’s service for more than a decade.
Unlike his unlucky friend Cromwell, Cranmer managed to stay out of the sticky politics that seemed to get everyone around him killed.
What could he want with Lassells? The door opened and closed, and Anne heard footsteps move toward the chairs in the center of the room.
“I spoke with your sister earlier today,” Cranmer replied. “She told me you were under house arrest for something having to do with Queen Katherine.”
Lassells gave an annoyed huff. “I’ve known the queen since her youth. I went to confront her about a troubling rumor I had heard, and her response was to lock me away, presumably to hide her guilt.”
“Guilt of what?” Cranmer pressed.
When Lassells didn’t immediately respond, Anne pictured Cranmer leaning closer.
He had always had an air about him, a fatherly figure who wanted to share in her challenges and triumphs.
He hadn’t been that much older than Anne—maybe ten years or so—but there was something both ancient and familiar in his features.
The hollows of his cheeks, softened by his beard, and his gray-blue eyes, always squinting thoughtfully, gave him the look of a scholar or a priest, someone you could trust with your secrets.
Until he betrayed them.
“John, I need to know what is happening close to the king,” Cranmer said. “He has had misfortune in his marriages before, and it is our job to protect him.”
Anne couldn’t help but roll her eyes at Lina from behind the curtains, and Lina’s flat stare in return said everything.
[*2] At times throughout her reign, Anne had thought Cranmer a friend, but then again, she had always had terrible taste in male allies.
In the end, just as Cromwell had, he disavowed her.
Two days before her execution, Cranmer declared her marriage with Henry void, simply because he was too cowardly to stand up to his king.
Anne supposed that didn’t make him different from other men, but she hated him for it just the same.
Lassells caved to Cranmer’s gentle pressure.
“My sister, Mary Hall, lived at Lambeth with the Dowager Duchess and the queen, or Lady Katherine, as she was in those days. She saw with her own eyes the queen being inappropriate with men in the household, including the gentleman Francis Dereham. My sister refused to join the queen’s service when offered the opportunity, knowing the light ways Katherine had with men.
Before she declined, she heard through some of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting that there was a new lover—Thomas Culpeper, a member of the king’s privy chamber.
That was it for my sister. She had to refuse. ”
There was a creak of furniture as Cranmer repositioned himself. “Those are serious accusations,” he said. “You are certain?”
“Of Dereham? Yes. And I would not be the least bit surprised if the rumor about Thomas Culpeper turned out to be true.”
Anne felt her heart plummet. This was worse than anything she could have imagined. For Kat to have had any sort of relations prior to her marriage would be damning enough in Henry’s eyes, but if word of the new affair reached the king…
“I will have to get proof, of course,” Cranmer was saying. “Would you and your sister be willing to testify against the queen?”
“I will do whatever I can to protect our kingdom,” Lassells replied, and Anne sneered at the note of false nobility in his tone.
The two men made plans to meet again, Cranmer promising to get Lassells free of house arrest before the holiday and Lassells agreeing to chaperone his sister at an interrogation.
All the while, Anne’s blood pounded in her ears, and her fingers strayed toward her bloodletting knife.
Could she stop them both now with a curse?
Put an end to all of this before it even started?
But before she could develop a strategy, Cranmer was saying good night and closing the door behind him.
She peeked out from behind the curtain to see Lassells standing with his hand on the doorknob, presumably torn between waiting for Cranmer’s return and his own desire to escape while no one was looking.
That, at least, Anne could stop.
She burst out from the curtain, letting her glamour drop to shore up her magick and not bothering to conceal the fury on her features.
Lassells turned around at the commotion, and Anne tracked his expression from surprise to doubt to fear.
Even years later, England had not forgotten the face of its most infamous queen.
“Who are you?” he asked, voice shaking. He held his candle higher, as though the light would show him anything other than what he saw now.