For God and Gold (Anne Boleyn Fanfic)

Chapter 2

There are letters. She knows their contents without opening them, but she has to pretend surprise.

A few well-wishers, including her busy brother. George is feeling heady due to their good fortune, thinks himself a great man in the making, and quotes too much Cicero.

There was a time they used to bandy Latinate phrases together, thrilled by their own cleverness. It was spiced by a little cruel delight over the fact that neither their sister, not a great learner, nor their mother, a creature of the quiet and pious Plantagenet court of the late Elizabeth of York, could understand them.

God, what children they have been. Beautiful, brilliant children with sharp edges to their words.

Anne promises herself she will reply to George later, but she is not sure what she is going to say. She is unmoored, drifting like an unborn soul in some vestibule of Heaven.

There is a letter from Cardinal Wolsey - this one she remembers well. It had been written in one of the last months when their truce still held, when he was still hoping for her goodwill, before she had unleashed hell upon him.

There was a time she delighted in this reversal of fortune, the mighty prelate hoping for her goodwill, where once he had wrecked her hopes with a word and laughed at her pretensions.

This one is easy to reply to. She pens a gracious letter thanking him for the carps from his own pond.

And then, of course, there is a letter from Henry. This one passed onto her by the physician's own hand, the physician that he had sent to tend to her.

There was a time Anne felt slighted by the fact that her supposedly gallant lover fled at the hint of her sickness. It seemed so disappointing, so incongruous with his ardent promises. Now she sees there are few things on this earth easier to explain. Henry has always adored the human mirrors that showed him something he wanted to see - a chivalrous knight, a godly monarch, a wise Solomon. But a mirror is a mirror; it is not supposed to have the defects of the flesh. A silvered Venetian mirror does not fall ill. A Roman statue does not talk back to you. A stained-glass saint does not declare she is tired or unwilling.

And if she does, one can always pray to another.

Anne puts off replying to this one, and not simply because she is close to nausea at reading these courteous lines breathing with hunger. She needs to decide how to proceed. Had she not prided herself on being the one who inherited her father's cold, slick mind, that small part of the brain that never stopped whirling and scheming and wondering - the feature that George had let lie fallow, and Mary never had in the first place?

When she is judged well enough to come downstairs and join the family at dinner, Anne does her utmost to appear bright and merry. It is harder than she thought it would be. Her body is younger now, and empty of the lingering pain that wretched miscarriages bring, but her mind is the same, and the last few years have worn it thin.

'Have you replied to His Majesty?' Her father asks, his tone mild as always.

'I am composing the best possible answer,' Anne replies.

'In your head?'

'Naturally.'

'If I were you, I would try to draft a few versions on paper. It clears the mind.'

'Paper is not cheap.'

'Neither...' He takes a sip of his wine, and for a second, Anne images that he is going to say neither are you. 'Neither is our project.'

You left me to die.

'Anne, you really must eat something,' her mother interjects. There is a slightly greater number of candles on the table than is prudent, but their amber glow washes Elizabeth Boleyn's skin into a younger mask, and turns her fair hair golden.