LITMIR.BIZ

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and stopped pretending to a modesty I didn’t truly feel.

      Throughout the day, whenever Tom was away—and oh how bereft and empty the house seemed without him!—I was often sullen and listless, weary as though I hadn’t slept at all, and prone to be short of temper and tart of tongue, to snap at those about me who innocently and unintentionally irritated my frayed and passion-enflamed nerves, as sensitive as a rotten tooth is to sugar. Shadows hovered beneath my eyes and Cupid’s arrow shot away all appetite for food. I hungered only for Tom, to greedily swallow down love’s nectar when his cock-cannon fired inside my eager mouth. But when Tom was near, all it took was a touch of his hand or even a look would suffice and my heart would go zing! like the sharply plucked strings of a harp, and what he called “the pink petals amongst the red” would grow moist with the dew of lust as I yearned for my gardener to come tend my rosy buds, growing well now under his care. And I lost all trust I had ever had in my knees; I felt as if the whole of me would turn to water upon which a pulsing, throbbing, vibrant pink flower would bob like a lustily beating heart. As such fanciful thoughts assailed me, my whole body would quiver as if I were one of the wobbly fat ladies the pastry cook fashioned out of jelly for Tom’s amusement, and Kate would voice concern that I had caught a chill and order another applewood log thrown upon the fire, so solicitous was she for my welfare and blind to the truth before her eyes.

      Then suddenly a strange lethargy began to steal over Kate, sapping her energy. She grew listless and pale and often queasy, and began to shun her breakfast tray, and lie abed late. She took frequent naps throughout the day and retired early at night as if she could not wait to fall into bed and sleep. Sometimes she would even nod off over her embroidery or beloved English translations of the Scriptures. Heedlessly, Tom and I would laugh and off we would scurry for long rides, galloping across the countryside with the wind in our hair, or sometimes, when the fancy seized us, and Kate bade us go and enjoy ourselves while she went early, yawning, droopy-eyed and leaden-footed to bed, to sail in her barge beneath the silvery moonlight upon the smooth sparkling sapphire-black river.

      While Kate slumbered peacefully and obliviously in her bed, we would lounge by the fire, late into the night, lolling together on the bearskin rug, dipping strawberries into wine or cream and feeding each other, with Tom’s head resting in my lap or mine in his. Once he even dared take a strawberry and reach beneath my skirts with it, pressing it gently between my legs, against the pink heart of my womanhood. And, drawing it out again, the ruby-red heart-shaped fruit glistening with my juices, he looked up at me, deep into my eyes, as he slowly savored it. I shivered and quivered and felt as if the core of me were slowly melting and soon all that would be left of me was a hank of red hair and a puddle of flesh-colored wax at his feet. He made even something as simple as eating strawberries a sensual delight.

      One night he recited a poem to me:

      They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

      With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

      I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek

      That are now wild and do not remember

      That sometime they put themselves in danger

      To take bread at my hand; and now they range

      Busily seeking with a continual change.

      Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise

      Twenty times better; but once in special,

      In thin array after a pleasant guise,

      When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

      And she me caught in her arms long and small,

      Therewithall sweetly did me kiss,

      And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

      It was no dream, I lay broad waking.

      But all is turned thorough my gentleness,

      Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

      And I have leave to go of her goodness,

      And she also to use newfangleness.

      But since that I so kindly am served,

      I would fain know what she hath deserved.

      Afterward, he told me that the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, had written it for my mother, each stanza heart-heavy with longing and regret for their lost love, the chance fate had cheated them of when my father, the determined hunter and mighty Caesar of Wyatt’s most famous poem, marked her out as his and fastened a black velvet choker about her neck like a dog’s collar set with diamonds spelling out “Noli Me Tangere,” making it plain that she was his.

      By firelight, Tom resurrected, just for me, the fascinating creature that was Anne Boleyn. Through his words he made her live again, letting me see her as, in a moment of triumph, she danced and waded through red rose petals which my father had ordered suspended in a golden net beneath the ceiling to be released, to rain down, upon her entry into the Great Hall. And how she had laughed and spun around, her black hair swinging gypsy-free all the way down to her knees, with my own unborn self making her belly into a proud little round ball beneath her crimson gown. The gold cord laces on the back of her bodice had been left unfastened, for her personal comfort and to better accommodate me, and the tasseled ends bobbed and bounced, mingling with the blackness of her hair as she danced, and also to boast, to flaunt her success in the faces of her enemies and the naysayers who had dared declare that Anne Boleyn would never be queen. Giddy with triumph, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed as she spun round and round, stirring up rose petals and, watching her, my father smiled with joy.

      Tom was a man who loved to live on the slicing edge of danger’s razor. As time passed, he grew bolder and more flagrant in his attentions to me, touching or looking at me in such a suggestive way right in front of Kate and other members of the household that I feared the truth would be revealed.

      Once when my tutor had stepped momentarily out of our schoolroom, Tom seized the chance to run in, drop to his knees, and crawl beneath the table where I sat absorbed in my Greek translations, and duck his head beneath my skirts. I gave a startled cry and Master Grindal opened the door just as Tom was backing out from beneath the table and standing up. He made some excuse about having come to see how his stepdaughter’s lessons progressed only to discover me in a state of fright because of a spider, which he had just killed, but my flaming hot blush, and the absence of a dead spider, betrayed the truth, I am sure. And Master Grindal knew it took much more than a spider to frighten Elizabeth Tudor.

      Another afternoon we were strolling in the garden with Kate when Tom decided that I had been overlong in wearing mourning for my father; he was tired of seeing me in black all the time, and so saying, unsheathed his dagger and, bidding Kate hold my arms behind my back, he began to cut my black velvet gown away from me until it was reduced to nothing but a pile of useless ribbons curling round my feet.

      But he did not stop there. As the jagged ribbons fell and twined round my ankles like ebony snakes, his dagger rose and thrust down again and again, slicing through my starched white petticoats and soft lawn shift, his hands snatching and tearing away the frayed white strips, baring my limbs and privy parts.

      My face burning with shame, I struggled against Kate’s grasp. I was surprised by her strength; her graceful white hands were suddenly as strong as shackles. Turning to try to see her face, I thought I glimpsed a gloating malice lurking in her eyes before it disappeared so swiftly I was never truly certain if I had seen it or merely imagined it. I twisted hard against her, with all my might, and finally succeeded in wresting my wrists free. I twisted around and grasped and clung to her, my face flaming crimson as the roses that bloomed nearby, as I felt a breeze caress my now newborn-naked buttocks. My whole body felt on fire with shame, and yet . . . there was something else, something that made my knees grow weak. There were distinct threads of excitement and desire plaited so intricately with the humiliation, shame, and fear that I could not for the life of me tell where one ended and the other began. I couldn’t understand it, and it frightened me; it undermined my illusion of being in control, mistress of my own mind and body. I was in such a state of turmoil; peace of mind became akin to the Holy Grail to me!

      As

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