Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “And I am prisoner here,” Anne Boleyn said. Lambert turned up her translator; the words were just familiar, but the accent so strange she could not catch them without electronic help.

  “Not prisoner,” the Director said. “Hostage.”

  “Lord Brill, if I cannot leave, then I am a prisoner. Let us not mince words. I cannot leave this castle?”

  “You cannot.”

  “Please address me as ‘Your Grace.’ Is there to be a ransom?”

  “No, Your Grace. But because of your presence here thousands of men will live who would have otherwise died.”

  With a shock, Lambert saw Anne shrug; the deaths of thousands of men evidently did not interest her. It was true, then. They really were moral barbarians, even the women. The students should see this. That small shrug said more than all the battles viewed in Squares. Lambert felt her sympathy for the abducted woman lessen, a physical sensation like the emptying of a bladder, and was relieved to feel it. It meant she, Lambert, still had her own moral sense.

  “How long must I stay here?”

  “For life, Your Grace,” Brill said bluntly.

  Anne made no reaction; her control was awing.

  “And how long will that be, Lord Brill?”

  “No person knows the length of his or her life, Your Grace.”

  “But if you can read the future, as you claim, you must know what the length of mine would have been.”

  Lambert thought: We must not underestimate her. This Hostage is not like the last one.

  Brill said, with the same bluntness that honored Anne’s comprehension—did she realize that?—“If we had not brought you here, you would have died May 19, 1536.”

  “How?”

  “It does not matter. You are no longer part of that future, and so now events there will—”

  “How?”

  Brill didn’t answer.

  Anne Boleyn rose and walked to the window, absurdly small, Lambert thought, in the trailing nightdress. Over her shoulder she said, “Is this castle in England?”

  “No,” Brill said. Lambert saw him exchange glances with Culhane.

  “In France?”

  “It is not in any place on the Earth,” Brill said, “although it can be entered from three places on Earth. It is outside of Time.”

  She could not possibly have understood, but she said nothing, only went on staring out the window. Over her shoulder Lambert saw the exercise court, empty now, and the anti-matter power generators. Two technicians crawled over them with a robot monitor. What did Anne Boleyn make of them?

  “God knows if I had merited death,” Anne said. Lambert saw Culhane start.

  Brill stepped forward. “Your Grace—”

  “Leave me now,” she said, without turning.

  They did. Of course she would be monitored constantly—everything from brain scans to the output of her bowels. Although she would never know this. But if suicide was in that life-defying mind, it would not be possible. If Her Holiness ever learned of the suicide of a Time Hostage . . . Lambert’s last glimpse before the door closed was of Anne Boleyn’s back, still by the window, straight as a spear as she gazed out at anti-matter power generators in a building in permanent stasis.

  “Culhane, meeting in ten minutes,” Brill said. Lambert guessed the time lapse was to let the Director change into working clothes. Toshio Brill had come away from the interview with Anne Boleyn somehow diminished. He even looked shorter, although shouldn’t her small stature have instead augmented his?

  Culhane stood still in the corridor outside Anne’s locked room (would she try the door?). His face was turned away from Lambert’s. She said, “Culhane . . . you jumped a moment in there. When she said God alone knew if she had merited death.”

  “It was what she said at her trial,” Culhane said. “When the verdict was announced. Almost the exact words.”

  He still had not moved so much as a muscle of that magnificent body. Lambert said, probing, “You found her impressive, then. Despite her scrawniness, and beyond the undeniable pathos of her situation.”

  He looked at her then, his eyes blazing: Culhane, the research engine. “I found her magnificent.”

  She never smiled. That was one of the things she knew they remarked upon among themselves: She had overheard them in the walled garden. Anne Boleyn never smiles. Alone, they did not call her Queen Anne, or Her Grace, or even the Marquis of Rochford, the title Henry had conferred upon her, the only female peeress in her own right in all of England. No, they called her Anne Boleyn, as if the marriage to Henry had never happened, as if she had never borne Elizabeth. And they said she never smiled.

  What cause was there to smile, in this place that was neither life nor death?

  Anne stitched deftly at a piece of amber velvet. She was not badly treated. They had given her a servant, cloth to make dresses—she had always been clever with a needle, and the skill had not deserted her when she could afford to order any dresses she chose. They had given her books, the writing Latin but the pictures curiously flat, with no raised ink or painting. They let her go into any unlocked room in the castle, out to the gardens, into the yards. She was a Holy Hostage.

  When the amber velvet gown was finished, she put it on. They let her have a mirror. A lute. Writing paper and quills. Whatever she asked for, as generous as Henry had been in the early days of his passion, when he had divided her from her love Harry Percy, and had kept her loving hostage to his own fancy.

  Cages came in many sizes. Many shapes. And, if what Master Culhane and the Lady Mary Lambert said was true, in many times.

  “I am not a lady,” Lady Lambert had protested. She needn’t have bothered. Of course she was not a lady—she was a commoner, like the others, and so perverted was this place that the woman sounded insulted to be called a lady. Lambert did not like her, Anne knew, although she had not yet found out why. The woman was unsexed, like all of them, working on her books and machines all day, exercising naked with men, who thus no more looked at their bodies than they would those of fellow soldiers in the roughest camp. So it pleased Anne to call Lambert a lady when she did not want to be one, as she was now so many things she had never wanted to be. “Anne Boleyn.” Who never smiled.

  “I will create you a lady,” she said to Lambert. “I confer on you the rank of baroness. Who will gainsay me? I am the queen, and in this place there is no king.”

  And Mary Lambert had stared at her with the unsexed bad manners of a common drab.

  Anne knotted her thread and cut it with silver scissors. The gown was finished. She slipped it over her head and struggled with the buttons in the back, rather than call the stupid girl who was her servant. The girl could not even dress hair. Anne smoothed her hair herself, then looked critically at her reflection in the fine mirror they had brought her.

  For a woman a month and a half from childbed, she looked strong. They had put medicines in her food, they said. Her complexion, that creamy dark skin that seldom varied in color, was well set off by the amber velvet. She had often worn amber, or tawny. Her hair, loose since she had no headdress and did not know how to make one, streamed over her shoulders. Her hands, long and slim despite the tiny extra finger, carried a rose brought to her by Master Culhane. She toyed with the rose, to show off the beautiful hands, and lifted her head high.

  She was going to have an audience with Her Holiness, a female pope. And she had a request to make.

  “She will ask, Your Holiness, to be told the future. Her future, the one Anne Boleyn experienced in our own time stream, after the point we took her Hostage from hers. And the future of England.” Brill’s face had darkened; Lambert could see that he hated this. To forewarn his political rival that a Hostage would complain about her treatment. A Hostage, that person turned sacred object through the sacrifice of personal freedom to global peace. When Tullio Amaden Koyushi had been Hostage from Mars Three to the Republic of China, he had told the Church official in charge of his case that he was not being allowe
d sufficient exercise. The resulting inter-system furor had lost the Republic of China two trade contracts, both important. There was no other way to maintain the necessary reverence for the Hostage political system. The Church of the Holy Hostage was powerful because it must be, if the solar system was to stay at peace. Brill knew that.

  So did Her Holiness.

  She wore full state robes today, gorgeous with hundreds of tiny mirrors sent to her by the grateful across all worlds. Her head was newly shaved. Perfect, synthetic jewels glittered in her ears. Listening to Brill’s apology- in-advance, Her Holiness smiled. Lambert saw the smile, and even across the room she felt Brill’s polite, concealed frustration.

  “Then if this is so,” Her Holiness said, “why cannot Lady Anne Boleyn be told her future? Hers and England’s?”

  Lambert knew that the High Priest already knew the answer. She wanted to make Brill say it.

  Brill said, “It is not thought wise, Your Holiness. If you remember, we did that once before.”

  “Ah, yes, your last Hostage. I will see her, too, of course, on this visit. Has Queen Helen’s condition improved?”

  “No,” Brill said shortly.

  “And no therapeutic brain drugs or electronic treatments have helped? She still is insane from the shock of finding herself with us?”

  “Nothing has helped.”

  “You understand how reluctant I was to let you proceed with another Time Rescue at all,” Her Holiness said, and even Lambert stifled a gasp. The High Priest did not make those determinations; only the All-World Forum could authorize or disallow a Hostage taking—across space or time. The Church of the Holy Hostage was responsible only for the inspection and continuation of permits granted by the Forum. For the High Priest to claim political power she did not possess—

  The Director’s eyes gleamed angrily. But before he could reply, the door opened and Culhane escorted in Anne Boleyn.

  Lambert pressed her lips together tightly. The woman had sewn herself a gown, a sweeping ridiculous confection of amber velvet so tight at the breasts and waist she must hardly be able to breathe. How had women conducted their lives in such trappings? The dress narrowed her waist to nearly nothing; above the square neckline her collar bones were delicate as a bird’s. Culhane hovered beside her, huge and protective. Anne walked straight to the High Priest, knelt, and raised her face.

  She was looking for a ring to kiss.

  Lambert didn’t bother to hide her smile. A High Priest wore no jewelry except earrings, ever. The pompous little Hostage had made a social error, no doubt significant in her own time.

  Anne smiled up at Her Holiness, the first time anyone had seen her smile at all. It changed her face, lighting it with mischief, lending luster to the great dark eyes. A phrase came to Lambert, penned by the poet Thomas Wyatt to describe his cousin Anne: And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

  Anne said, in that sprightly yet aloof manner that Lambert was coming to associate with her, “It seems, Your Holiness, that we have reached for what is not there. But the lack is ours, not yours, and we hope it will not be repeated in the request we come to make of you.”

  Direct. Graceful, even through the translator and despite the ludicrous imperial plural. Lambert glanced at Culhane, who was gazing down at Anne as at a rare and fragile flower. How could he? That skinny body, without muscle tone let alone augments, that plain face, the mole on her neck . . . This was not the sixteenth century. Culhane was a fool.

  As Thomas Wyatt had been. And Sir Harry Percy. And Henry, King of England. All caught not by beauty but by that strange elusive charm.

  Her Holiness laughed. “Stand up, Your Grace. We don’t kneel to officials here.” Your Grace. The High Priest always addressed Hostages by the honorifics of their own state, but in this case it could only impede Anne’s adjustment.

  And what do I care about her adjustment? Lambert jeered at herself. Nothing. What I care about is Culhane’s infatuation, and only because he rejected me first. Rejection, it seemed, was a great whetter of appetite—in any century.

  Anne rose. Her Holiness said, “I’m going to ask you some questions, Your Grace. You are free to answer any way you wish. My function is to ensure that you are well treated, and that the noble science of the prevention of war, which has made you a Holy Hostage, is also well served. Do you understand?”

  “We do.”

  “Have you received everything you need for your material comfort?”

  “Yes,” Anne said.

  “Have you received everything you’ve requested for your mental comfort? Books, objects of any description, company?”

  “No,” Anne said. Lambert saw Brill stiffen.

  Her Holiness said, “No?”

  “It is necessary for the comfort of our mind—and for our material comfort as well—to understand our situation as fully as possible. Any rational creature requires such understanding to reach ease of mind.” Brill said, “You have been told everything related to your situation. What you ask is to know about situations that now, because you are here, will never happen.”

  “Situations that have happened, Lord Brill, else no one could know of them. You could not.”

  “In your time stream they will not happen,” Brill said. Lambert could hear the suppressed anger in his voice, and wondered if the High Priest could. Anne Boleyn couldn’t know how serious it was to be charged by Her Holiness with a breach of Hostage treatment. If Brill was ambitious—and why wouldn’t he be?—such charges could hurt his future.

  Anne said swiftly, “Our time is now your time. You have made it so. The situation was none of our choosing. And if your time is now ours, then surely we are entitled to the knowledge that accompanies our time.” She looked at the High Priest. “For the comfort of our mind.”

  Brill said, “Your Holiness—”

  “No, Queen Anne is correct. Her argument is valid. You will designate a qualified researcher to answer any questions she has—any at all—about the life she might have had, or the course of events England took when the queen did not become a sacred Hostage.”

  Brill nodded stiffly.

  “Good-bye, Your Grace,” Her Holiness said. “I shall return in two weeks to inspect your situation again.”

  Two weeks? The High Priest was not due for another inspection for six months. Lambert glanced at Culhane to see his reaction to this blatant political fault-hunting, but he was gazing at the floor, to which Anne Boleyn had sunk in another of her embarrassing curtsies, the amber velvet of her skirts spread around her like gold.

  They sent a commoner to explain her life to her, the life she had lost. A commoner. And he had as well the nerve to be besotted with her. Anne always knew. She tolerated such fellows, like that upstart musician Smeaton, when they were useful to her. If this Master Culhane dared to make any sort of declaration, he would receive the same sort of snub Smeaton once had. Inferior persons should not look to be spoken to as noblemen.

  He sat on a straight-backed chair in her Tower room, looking humble enough, while Anne sat in the great carved chair with her hands tightly folded to keep them from shaking.

  “Tell me how I came to die in 1536.” God’s blood! Had ever before there been such a sentence uttered?

  Culhane said, “You were beheaded. Found guilty of treason.” He stopped, and flushed.

  She knew, then. In a queen, there was one cause for a charge of treason. “He charged me with adultery. To remove me, so he could marry again.”

  “Yes.”

  “To Jane Seymour.”

  “Yes.”

  “Had I first given him a son?”

  “No,” Culhane said.

  “Did Jane Seymour give him a son?”

  “Yes. Edward VI. But he died at sixteen, a few years after Henry.” There was vindication in that, but not enough to stem the sick feeling in her gut. Treason. And no son . . . There must have been more than desire for the Seymour bitch. Henry must have hated her. Adultery . . . “With whom?”

 
Again the oaf flushed. “With five men, Your Grace. Everyone knew the charges were false, created merely to excuse his own adultery—even your enemies admitted such.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Sir Henry Norris. Sir Francis Weston. William Brereton. Mark Smeaton. And . . . and your brother George.”

  For a moment she thought she would be sick. Each name fell like a blow, and the last like the axe itself. George. Her beloved brother, so talented at music, so high-spirited and witty . . . Henry Norris, the King’s friend. Weston and Brereton, young and light-hearted but always, to her, respectful and careful. . . and Mark Smeaton, the oaf made courtier because he could play the virginals.

  The long, beautiful hands clutched the sides of the chair. But the moment passed, and she could say with dignity, “They denied the charges?”

  “Smeaton confessed, but he was tortured into it. The others denied the charges completely. Henry Norris offered to defend your honor in single combat.”

  Yes, that was like Harry: so old-fashioned, so principled. She said, “They all died.” It was not a question: If she had died for treason, they would have, too. And not alone; no one died alone. “Who else?”

  Culhane said, “Maybe we should wait for the rest of this, Your—”

  “Who else? My father?”

  “No. Sir Thomas More, John Fisher—”

  “More? For my . . .” she could not say adultery.

  “Because he would not swear to the Oath of Supremacy, which made the king and not the pope head of the Church in England. That act opened the door to religious dissension in England.”

  “It did not. The heretics were already strong in England. History cannot fault that to me!”

  “Not as strong as they would become,” Culhane said, almost apologetically. “Queen Mary was known as Bloody Mary for burning heretics who used the Act of Supremacy to break from Rome—Your Grace! Are you all right. . . Anne!”

  “Do not touch me,” she said. Queen Mary. Then her own daughter Elizabeth had been disinherited, or killed . . . Had Henry become so warped that he would kill a child? His own child? Unless he had come to believe . . .