They dressed her and she laced tightly so that her breasts were pressed into two tantalizing curves of creamy flesh at the neck of her gown. Her glossy black hair was exposed by her pushed-back hood, her long fingers were loaded with rings, she wore her favorite pearl choker with the “B” for Boleyn at her throat, and she paused before she left the room to look at herself in the mirror, and shot her reflection that knowing, seductive little half-smile.
That’s how it is for women,” I said, stung into honesty. “It’s not what one would choose – I grant you that. But women are the very toys of fortune.
There are many sorts of love,” she counsels me. “And when you love a man who is less than you dreamed, you have to make allowances for the difference between a real man and a dream.
I kneel on the planks for her blessing, and then sit beside her with my feet dangling over the edge and my own reflection looking up at me as if I were a water goddess living under the river, waiting to be released from an enchantment, and not a spinster princess that nobody wants.
I would rather see you dead at my feet than dishonored.
I looked over to Anne. She was untying her mask and watching me with a long calculating look, the Boleyn look, the Howard look that says: what has happened here, and how may I turn it to my advantage? It was as if under her golden mask was another beautiful mask of skin, and only beneath that was the real woman.
We are Plantagenets – we dine on a diet of betrayal and heartbreak.
Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.
I have to tell you, you have to know: I have loved you honorably as a knight should do his lady, and I have loved you passionately as a man might a woman; and now, before I leave you, I want to tell you that I love you, I love you –.
I find I must prepare for my death. I don’t fear it. Ever since I lost my son I have been weary to my soul, and I think, when it finally comes, it will be a lying down to sleep without fear of dreams, without fear of waking. I am ready to lie down to sleep. I am tired.
I am happy; I am in his arms, my face crushed against his padded jacket, his arms around me as tight as a bear, so that I cannot breathe. When I look up into his beloved weary face, he kisses me so hard that I close my eyes and think myself a besotted girl again. I catch a breath, and he kisses me some more.
He knew as well as I did that you cannot release a girl from her promise to love a man. She either gets herself free or she is bound for life.
It doesn’t matter if you call it magic or determination. It doesn’t matter if you make a spell or a plot. You have to make up your mind what you want, and have the courage to set your heart on it. You will be Queen of England, your husband is the king. Through you, the Yorks regain the throne of England that is their right. Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.
He was such a happy boy, and happiness is not memorable.
However much I might please Henry, he was still her boy – her lovely indulged spoilt golden boy. He might summon me or any other girl to his room, without disturbing the constant steady affection between them which had sprung from her ability, long ago, to love this man who was more foolish, more selfish, and less of a prince than she was a princess.
These were simple people: when someone told them that they had nothing to fear they knew that they were in trouble.
We wait by the door for him to notice us and I think how wonderful it must be to be a man and put your initial on a command and know that at once, such a thing is done. I would send out commands all day just for the pleasure of it.
I do not prepare for defeat. To do so would be to betray myself.
I was not nervous. For the first time ever I felt as if I had taken my life into my own hands and I could command my own destiny. For once I was obedient neither to uncle nor father nor king, but following my own desires. And I knew that my desire led me, inexorably, to the man I loved. I.
So he left her, because in his heart he feared that she was a woman with a divided nature – and he did not realize that all women are creatures of divided nature.