“Pray that He will grant it.”
Anne bit her lip. “I cannot help fearing that while Katherine lives, I will never bear a living son. And even if I did, there would always be those to call it bastard. If only I could be the true and undisputed Queen!”
George said nothing. He just sat there, pensive.
“Katherine is my death and I am hers,” she said. “I will take good care that she shall not laugh at me after I die.”
“And how do you mean to do that?” he asked.
“I will think of something.”
He looked at her skeptically. He knew her too well. Of all the things people called her, they were unjust in naming her “murderess.” She did not have it in her.
—
And then it seemed that God Himself intervened. Katherine, Henry was informed, had fallen seriously ill. It seemed like the answer to all Anne’s prayers. Her son might be indisputably legitimate.
But the next report informed them that Katherine had rallied.
“I beg of you,” Anne said to Henry, desperate, “put an end to her and her daughter! For our child’s sake!”
Henry rounded on her. “Such sentiments do not become a woman.” His tone was scathing.
“You will never know security until you are freed from these traitors!” she cried. “I will never be satisfied until they are dead.”
“Then you will be satisfied soon, at least in part. Reading this report, I suspect I need do nothing to hasten Katherine’s end. Peace be, Anne. Let Nature take its course.”
1536
“Chapuys wants to see me,” Henry told Anne. It was a week into the new year, and mercifully the nausea of early pregnancy was abating. And Chapuys might be bringing the news she needed to hear, having just returned from Kimbolton. Believing that Katherine was dying, Henry had at last permitted him to go to her.
“It cannot do any harm now,” he had said.
Anne took her place beside Henry in the presence chamber, which was packed with courtiers anticipating a drama. Father was there, and George, eager to hear that she was now the undoubted Queen of England.
Chapuys was announced. He came wearing unrelieved black, his face gray and solemn.
“Your Majesty,” he said, rising from his bow, “I have great sorrow in telling you that the Queen is dead.”
The Angel Gabriel had hardly brought better news. “Now I am indeed a queen,” Anne declared.
“God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war!” Henry said jubilantly.
Chapuys threw him a fleeting, withering look. “I bring you this, her last letter.” He handed over a folded paper sealed with the arms of England and Spain. Henry broke the seal and read, with all eyes upon him. Suddenly he was very still, and Anne saw a tear trickle down his cheek. But he recovered himself. “God rest the Princess Dowager,” he said, crossing himself.
Anne heard her father muttering that it was a pity the Lady Mary did not keep company with her mother.
—
Afterward, when she was resting in her chamber, hardly able to believe that her great rival was finally no more, George came to see her.
“It has fallen out the way you wanted it,” he observed. “You should be pleased.”
“I cannot thank God sufficiently,” she said. “If we needed proof that He smiles on us, this is it.”
“Sometimes He needs a little assistance in working His will,” George observed.
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply, sitting up to face him.
“He helps those who help themselves.”
Horror gripped her. “Brother, what are you trying to say to me?”
“I think you know, Anne.” He smiled at her. “A few well-chosen herbs…But never fear, all is well now. And she would have died anyway. We could not risk her living until your son is born.”
She was in turmoil. That George, her beloved George, should have done this terrible thing—and for her! And worse that, out of her own mouth, she had unwittingly said the words that had driven him to it. Yes, she had wanted Katherine dead—but by the just process of the law, not by the hand of a murderer. For that was what he was now, her brother—a murderer. God had had no part in this at all.
“I did not ask it!” she hissed. “It was not done in my name! How could you? Now we will all be cursed. How can God smile on me now?”
Breaking down, blinded by tears, she stumbled from the bed and fled to the little oratory that led off her chamber. Ignoring George’s pleas to listen to him, she locked the door.
“Go away!” she cried. “You have done me an evil that can never be mended.” And she slid to her knees, weeping copiously. God would surely punish her for this, even though she had not intended it. Her son, if it was a son, was cursed. And if he was born dead, like the others, there was little hope for her. Henry would get rid of her as he had Katherine, and her enemies would waste no time in finding him another wife. He was highly suggestible, as she well knew, and—she must face it—his passion for her had died. She realized suddenly that, while Katherine had lived, he would not have contemplated abandoning her. It would have been tantamount to admitting that he had been wrong to marry her, and that Katherine was his true wife. But with the Princess Dowager dead, all that stood between Anne and disaster was her unborn child.
—
She had calmed down by the time Henry joined her for supper that evening, but she was still in shock about what George had done, and Henry noticed.
“Why so serious?” he chided. “You should be rejoicing tonight. I’ve ordered my cellarer to bring a good Burgundy to celebrate.” She realized he had not donned black.
She collected herself. “I can’t stop worrying that the Emperor might invade on Mary’s behalf.”
“Don’t fret. I spoke to Chapuys before Vespers. I told him I wanted Charles to withdraw his support from Mary and get the Papal judgment revoked. He said he didn’t think such things would be possible, but I said I was confident that Mary can be brought to submission now that her mother is dead, and that I hoped the Emperor would be willing to offer friendship now that the real cause of our enmity no longer exists. I gathered from Chapuys’s demeanor that he knows Charles would prefer us to be allies. His merchants are suffering as ours are. So be of good cheer.”
She tried to smile. She could never tell Henry the truth. How could she condemn George to the dreadful death that had been meted out to Richard Rouse? And he being her brother, people would point the finger at her as his accomplice, or even the begetter of his crime. They thought the worst of her anyway, so few would doubt it. They would be baying for her blood.
Thinking of Rouse brought to mind the attempt to poison Bishop Fisher. Had George been behind that after all? She dared not ask him, for she did not want to know.