For God and Gold (Anne Boleyn Fanfic)

Chapter 3

Her sleeves are green, and her face is pale.

No shining pageant to herald her return to court, this time. No green castles defended by virtues. Only the silent water, and the splash of oars, and the darkened corridors of Greenwich Palace punctuated by flickering candlelight.

He is waiting for her in his bedchamber, like the monster at the heart of the labyrinth.

For one mad moment, Anne wonders if she might not play the part of Theseus to the hilt - use this moment of vulnerability to slay the beast that plagued her and eventually killed her. She has to discard that thought - she has nothing sharp on her own person, and Henry, although no longer the hero of every tournament as he had been in his youth, is certainly a strong man.

Henry is younger than the heavy-set, belligerent man she remembers. Not young, of course - certainly older than her - but there is in him at least a shade of that athletic and learned prince who once made noblemen and commoners alike hope for a new golden age.

Except it was a false hope. Anne knows that now.

She curtseys as deeply as though it were a Privy Chamber, not a bedchamber. She despises herself for it.

'Your Majesty'.

'Anne'. His gaze is burning with something beyond hunger. 'You have come'.

'I dared not do otherwise'.

He smiles at that.

He must think she is joking.

He doesn't spend time on wine and conversation. They have had plenty of conversations before, after all; too many by half, most likely, from his perspective.

Anne stiffens as he starts unlacing her gown, but Henry either doesn't notice or ascribes it to a fitting display of maidenly modesty.

She recalls the night in Calais, the night in another life. The hunger on both sides - his the straightforward one, for her body and her touch; hers a thorny tangle of an appetite for accolades whetted by the French reception, exhaustion and frustration born of long waiting, and, of course, the ever-present thirst to raise her family higher, to make her family proud.

There was some rose oil rubbed around her neck and collarbone and the tops of her breasts then. The sweet flower. The Tudor flower. There was a wealth of her sister's advice in her ears, and her mother's ruthlessly practical wisdom. She was a maiden when he had her first, whatever had been claimed in that sordid court of law later. She could not, however, quite get rid of the feeling then that Venetian courtesans hunting for custom with demure looks at Mass would have accepted her as a sister in that moment.

That feeling is back now, and sharper than it had been the first time around. After all, now Anne has the rare knowledge of the man who is panting in front of her, pawing at her still-clothed body. The hopes and the illusions have all been stripped away, and now she sees the raw meat beneath the elegant dressing. And she sees that this meat is truly, deeply rotten.

She knows what to do now - or, rather, what not to do. Her goal right now is not to entice, but to satisfy quickly. Too quickly, perhaps. Disappointingly so. He wants that adolescent dream, a virgin temptress? He is going to get a pious little lover, something that might, hopefully, remind him of the Blount girl or his first wife thoroughly enough that he will lose interest after a few encounters.

His first wife. Katherine is, of course, his only wife here, so far. Anne knows it will not be the case for long. Even if - when - she herself fades from his field of sight, Henry will be too proud to go back to his Spanish queen and beg forgiveness for straying. This man has never considered, much less acknowledged, himself to be wrong in the whole history of his existence.