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‘Tudor colors…green and white…roses…the royal emblem…’ I heard him murmur intently as he scrutinized the gown. ‘It’s perfect! Here! Wear this!’ He tossed it onto Anne’s lap.
I recognized the material at once. George had brought it back with him from a brief pleasure jaunt to France. I had coveted it for myself at first glance, but no matter how I oohed and ahhed over its beauty, and hinted at the nearness of my birthday, George had ignored me and given it to Anne instead.
‘No more of these drab, colorless dresses!’ he continued. ‘If you want to dress like a nun I will send you to a convent! That is the traditional fate of spinsters who fail to make a proper marriage. Need I remind you, Anne, that you are now three years past twenty and woman’s youth is fleeting?’
He reached out and yanked the plain coif of pleated white linen from her head. ‘Take down your hair! You’ve half an hour to prepare yourself; when you are ready, wait in the rose garden. Take your lute and play, or stroll about and admire the flowers, whatever you will, as long as you appear pleasing to a man’s eye!’
And then he was gone, slamming the door behind him.
I knew something important was about to happen. While Anne, clutching her lute and arrayed in the spring green gown, sullenly descended the three stone steps into the sunken rose garden, I rushed to hide behind the tall, dense green shrubberies surrounding it.
She left her lute lying upon a bench and idly roamed the pebbled path, lost in thought, crushing the fallen petals of red, pink, yellow, and white beneath her satin slippers, while all around her roses in full, heady bloom swayed gently upon their thorny stems.
Then there he was—King Henry VIII himself in all his might and majestic glory. In his eagerness he had ridden ahead of the hunting party, thus no cavalcade of clattering hooves and blaring horns heralded his arrival. He stood there, a ruddy giant of a man, hands on hips, sweaty and flush-faced from heat and exertion, legs parted as if he meant to straddle the world and declare himself its master.
The crunch of his boots upon the gravel startled her, and Anne spun around and sank quickly into a curtsy. Any woman less graceful and nimble would have lost her balance and fallen flat.
‘Up! Up!’ he gestured brusquely. ‘No ceremony, Mistress Anne. You see I come before you not as Henry of England…’ At this, her brows arched skeptically. ‘Ardent Desire has come to call upon Perseverance. You persevere in staying away from court while I ardently desire your presence!’
‘Alas, Sire, I am done with all that!’ she answered. ‘The pleasures of the court have lost their allure, and my heart is yet too sore to contemplate…’
‘Three years is time aplenty for a broken heart to mend! You have been overlong at nursing your grief, Mistress Anne, and I command you now to cease!’
‘With all due respect, Sire,’ Anne retorted, ‘my heart is not yours to command.’
Undaunted, he answered, ‘It will be.’
‘I daresay anything is possible.’ Anne shrugged.
‘Aye, it is, Anne, it is!’ he vowed, nodding eagerly. ‘With us, anything is possible!’
‘As you say.’ She shrugged disinterestedly.
‘Come, take my arm, show me the garden.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Nay, dearest Anne’—Henry turned and lightly caressed her cheek—‘I’ve yet to be granted my wish.’
‘Then if Your Majesty will follow me along this path, I will be glad to show you the garden,’ Anne said coldly, turning away from his touch.
‘For you, Mistress Anne, I would follow the path to damnation itself!’ he declared as they proceeded along the petal-strewn path.
‘Ah! What fine roses flourish here at Hever!’ His meaty fingers caressed a lush crimson bloom while his eyes devoured Anne.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty. I shall give the gardener your compliments,’ said Anne, her voice crisp and cool as winter.
‘You are not your sister,’ he observed.
‘No, Your Majesty, I am not.’
‘What a rare blossom you are, Mistress Anne! An English rose who weathered the lusty storms of the French court and came home to us fresh and unplucked! The King of France, I am told, is an ardent gardener who likes nothing better than to gather a beautiful bouquet for his bedchamber. However did this English rose escape his attention?’
‘One can attract attention without bestowing one’s attentions, Sire. And, as you say, I am not my sister. I would never sell myself so cheaply.’
‘Cheaply?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Many would account it a great honor to be the mistress of a king!’
‘As Your Majesty rightfully observed, I am a rarity, the exception rather than the rule. Never would I sacrifice my honor for the brief, fleeting favor that can be found between the sheets of a royal bed.’
‘You are proud, Mistress Anne.’
‘Too proud to be plucked by a King and then discarded. A rose does not survive long once it has been plucked, and I will not, like some dried and wizened petals made into a potpourri, be parceled out as a gift to some obliging courtier, as my sister was to William Carey!’
King Henry just stared at her, pulses throbbing. There was a sharp snap as his fingers tightened round the stem of the crimson rose.
‘Roses are meant to be plucked, not to wither upon their stems, their petals by the winds and rains dispersed and trodden underfoot!’
‘That would depend, Sire, upon who does the plucking. I think it is not meet for someone to steal into a garden and take whatsoever he desires, like a thief in the night. Better that it be done lawfully, by one who has the right!’
‘It is not for roses to decide who plucks them! I look forward to seeing you at court, Mistress Anne.’
‘I thank Your Majesty for your kind invitation…’
‘It is not an invitation.’
‘It is a command?’
‘We understand each other perfectly. Good day, Mistress Anne.’ He extended the rose to her and, with a curt nod, left her.
With her left hand Anne tore the petals from the rose and flung them fiercely aside as her right hand did likewise with the stem; then, with a swirl of spring green skirts she turned and ran from the garden to lose herself in the maze where I dared not follow.
That night Anne kept to her chamber, ignoring her father’s repeated summons to come down to dine.
‘The King requests your presence,’ the first message said. Another followed shortly afterwards, saying, ‘Bring your lute; the King desires you to play for him.’
Anne sent her lute downstairs with her answer. ‘Play it for him yourself. My head aches and I am going to bed.’
Sir Thomas Boleyn did not dare send for her again and made her excuses instead to the much annoyed monarch.
The next morning we assembled in the courtyard to bid the King farewell. Only Anne, to her father’s supreme annoyance, was absent.
King Henry pursed his lips and a cloud of anger seemed to hover above the swaying white ostrich plumes on his round velvet cap.
‘We hope Mistress Anne will soon regain her health and grace our court again,’ he mumbled gruffly.
‘Indeed