Chapter Text
They spent two weeks in the country and then came back to court at once, and she moved into Anthony’s grace and favour chambers with the promise to return home soon. The King wanted him for the joust and she wanted to stay at court anyway. Country was nice but court was where the action happened and besides…she liked spending time with her siblings. She had never before spent so much time with them, George, her, Mary and Anne were so close in age that for the four of them it was like a release of their childhood days.
George was to marry Jane Parker who he was rather loathe off. Beth had never met her nor had Anne but Mary had crowed like a peacock when George had come and told them of the match. He had drowned his sorrows in wine and Beth a very happily married woman had left the three of them drinking and gone to find her husband.
For the first time that she slipped into their chambers he did not greet her with a smile. She knew he had been out with Crompton the night before, Brandon had been banished from court still but they all knew that he was to return. The knowledge of his marriage to Princess Margaret had amused half the court for a week and a half. She pulled her hood off and her golden hair fell down her back and then.
“Are you well husband?”
He was sat staring at the fire and then he looked up and for a second she was almost chilled to the bone at the look on his face. He was looking at her as if she was a questioning puzzle. These weeks had been so happy between the two of them, she had been aching for his touch and her own had gotten only braver with each passing day and night they spent in each other’s company. Never before had he looked at her like that.
“Anthony?”
For a second that look remained and then the smile was back on his face. He held out his hand and she took it and he pulled her into his lap and she fell into it letting him rest his head on her shoulder and she relaxed somewhat. This was normal for them and she enjoyed it. She did not know how to tell her sisters how much she enjoyed the mantle of wife.
“Forgive me” he said quietly. “I grow melancholy. But I have good news. Charles is to return to court”
“The King has forgiven him?”
“So it would seem.”
She let him push her off him and she moved to undo her dress. Dinner would be starting soon. It was odd to go into the dinner as a wife and not as one of the maids. Still she had not been able to shift the feeling that she had missed something rather obvious.
The King came in and they sat down to eat and she noticed that the King seemed to be sending many a dish to Anne. It was odd. Anne was one of the maids and the Boleyn’s were interconnected with the King perhaps more so since the birth of Mary’s second bastard but never before had he been so blanketly obvious to one sister over the other. Even Beth who thanks to Anthony got a dish now and then was surprised.
Anthony stabbed at his beef and she leaned forwards.
“Why is the King being so generous to Anne?”
“You tell me?”
“I do not understand”
He looked at her and then put down his knife and fork.
“Ask your sister” he said shortly. “I love you Beth and I want to stay in love with you so I will choose to believe that you are innocent in this”
She had no idea what he was on about but he struck up a conversation with John Seymour and that was the end of that.
It wasn’t that he was cold with her, indeed when they coupled it was still with the same passionate nature as it always was. She was still serving in the Queen’s rooms but she noticed that the Queen had turned her attention firmly against the Boleyn girls. Maybe it had been her absence that had made the coldness so clear to see. Granted the Queen was not the biggest fan of the three of them, Mary had spent a year and a half bedding her husband and had born him two children but she was surprised by it nonetheless. Maybe this was the first time that she had noticed such but Anne sailed around as if perfectly serene and Beth noticed that several of the other maids were shooting her very nasty looks and others seemed to be flocking to her side.
Margaret Pole who was arguably the second most powerful woman in England after the Queen looked as if she wanted to douse Anne in wine and set her on fire when they walked into dinner and she swept her dress away from Mary and Beth as if they had the plague attached to them. Even the Spanish Ambassador was looking at Anne with a sneer she did not understand.
The joust was on Friday and she watched as the King came out with Declare I Dare Not written over his saddle and with that she touched Anne’s arm and dragged her backwards as soon as the King was done in the lists.
“You do not wish to see your husband joust”
“Shut it Anne I’ve been gone two weeks not two months what on Earth has happened?”
Anne sighed and sat down on the bench spreading her black and silver gown and Beth took note of the quality that their father even with his money could never afford. Carefully she gritted her teeth, she was as stubborn as the rest of her siblings and she was also quite prepared to wait Anne out if she had to.
She didn’t have to wait her out long.
“The King is courting me”
“To replace Mary”
“No as more than that, I have him head over heels in love with me”
“Mary had him head over heels in love with him.”
“And I might love him back”
“Mary did love him back, look what am I missing here—”
“The Queen does not bleed anymore”
For a second she did not understand but then she did. In any other marriage the sign of a woman not bleeding would be a cause for celebration…for the Queen aging with no son and only a thin daughter it was a sign of commiserations.
“Oh”
“Yes, her sheets are rank with sweat. The change of life is upon her. She has now confirmed to the King that she is a barren woman.”
Beth didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t think that there was anything wrong with a woman nearing forty in this day and age nearing the end of her courses but clearly that was not want Anne wanted to hear. Instead she raised her eyebrow and Anne swung her legs out.
“He is looking for a way to dissolve his marriage”
“The Queen has agreed to a divorce?”
“No he is looking to do it without her permission”
For a second Beth didn’t get it, she was a newly married woman herself and perhaps it was that but the truth of the matter was that she was stunned into silence. She did not know how the King was going to get a divorce from the Queen or even if he could. She was the Queen of England, very few people alive remembered life without her as Queen. She had been the guiding light in the King’s life, had defeated the Scots, ran the country as he was off in France and Beth was not stupid, if a woman could pray her way into having sons six would be in the cradle by now.
“Anne what on Earth—”
“He has asked me to marry him”
For a second she felt the world turn on her.
“I don’t…what are you saying?”
“Wolsey is on his way to France to host a meeting of Cardinals in which they will declare that the Queen’s marriage is invalid, the King will then ask her to divorce and with Rome stacked against her she will have to comply and I will marry the King and be Queen. You will be the sister to the Queen of England”
For a moment she was so stunned that she didn’t know how to respond and then…
“Have you ran mad woman?”
Anne rolled her eyes.
“Beth—”
“Do you want the list of ways this could go wrong?”
“It will not—”
“You are firstly assuming” she said speaking over her sister. “That Wolsey will get the job done, the Queen’s nephew is the Holy Roman Emperor and one would assume he is going to stand up for his Aunt and his territories are vast and his armies huge, getting over that the Queen is beloved of the people and they won’t take to kindly to you doing whatever the fuck you are doing with her husband. Getting over that you have the nobles…and…and if he was doing it for a foreign princess maybe but Anne…this family is…were not European Royalty—”
“No we are English born and bred, finally we can get rid of those fucking Spaniards—”
“Anne shush”
But Anne laughed as if the whole thing was amusing.
“It’s nothing the King himself says”
“I don’t…Anne how would he divorce her under the Holy Church”
“A man shall not marry his brother’s widow”
“That marriage wasn’t consummated”
“I say It was”
“Oh Good Lord Anne what are you the fortune teller at the fair? There are only two people that know what happened in that marriage and one of them is dead and the other is not going to hand over her crown to you.” she shook her head utterly floored by the shit that she was hearing, she had been gone two weeks! How had the fabric of the court been so terribly ripped like this?
And by her own sister.
“What does father say?”
“He says he’d rather like to be the grandfather of the future King of England”
She did not know what to say to that. Instead she sank weak kneed onto the bench. Anne took her hand and turned her face illuminated.
“Be happy for me sister” she said beaming. “I have the King in my pocket, I know I am going to be the next Queen of England, I will make it so that nothing for woman in this world will ever be the same again and I will usher in a new England—be happy for me for I will remember you when I am Queen and when you have sons…my only regret is that father married you off so early”
She stood up and beamed and Beth looking at her felt her head swim.
“I am going to be the Queen of England” Anne Boleyn said to her sister with utter conviction in her voice. “I am going to be the first lady in the land, I am going to be the King’s wife, he loves me and I am going to make it so that I have his son and his crown. I am going to be the happiest woman ever”
She said it as if she had to tell herself that every day and Beth looking at her had the words on her lips to describe her sister but she could not say it.
After all, how does one call one’s own sister insane?
Anne ran off back to the lists leaving her sat there on the bench stunned into silence and that was where Anthony found her.
“She’s told you then?”
“You knew?”
“I suspected…Charles…Charles has a better network than I do and he’s back at court now so…but William told me enough, he told me that he was planning…it’s beggars belief to me if you want my humble opinion. I thought you didn’t know…apologies Beth but I had to make sure”
“How is she—” she still couldn’t say it and Anthony shrugged.
“I do not know” he said finally. “The Churchmen won’t support it, so if he goes through with it then he will have to destroy the Church and then God only knows what happens then, but he’s in such a mad grip of love…Anne is dancing merry circles around him, always hot and then cold…she makes it so that she is never there for him and then always there, she flirts as she breathes and she is the most determined woman. She won’t let him have her, she won’t let him fuck her, God knows if she did this would die out in a fortnight”
“My sister intends to be Queen of England” Beth said again through numb lips.
Anthony looked down at her and she looked up at him as if to confirm what an absolute shit show the idea was. Love her sister as she did the idea of Anne trying to be Queen instead of Catherine of Aragon double royal through her mother and father and married twice into the royal family was almost beyond laughable.
“I want us to leave court” he said shortly. “I want to spend sometime in the country. I don’t want us here when the Queen learns of this—”
“SHE DOESN’T KNOW?”
“SHUT UP” he hissed at her. “No, well…I think she does but the King hasn’t told her yet. She’s not stupid not by half she’ll know that he’s moving against her she’s known it since she told him that she was barren but…but he is being perfectly polite again to her and he’s trying to trap her into a false sense of security. Thankfully she’s too smart and she’s not going to be caught unawares by a Bessie Blount or Mary Boleyn again. She knows that she has to prepare to defend her daughter. My guess is she’s already gone through private means to tip off her nephew she might be in trouble”
“Her daughter?”
Anthony looked at her and his face was bleak.
“Beth if he goes ahead with this then he has to declare the Princess Mary a bastard and unfit to rule. If he goes through with this he will have to disinherit his only living legitimate heir. Anne thinks she can give him the boy that makes that worthwhile.”
For a second she stared at him and then…
“I don’t know what kind of world we are living in” she said finally and he smiled grimly at her.
“We are leaving this court as soon as I can get us away” he vowed and then he stalked off leaving her sat there with Anne’s words and his own dancing around her and the image of her sister as Queen of England in her head.
It was not comforting. It was not comforting at all.
The world of which she knew had fallen away again.
And this time she did not know where she was going to land.