The Don't Girls

by Octavia Cade

  Anne thought she might have felt a little guilty leaving such a child to such a man. If she did, it was gone soon enough in the sweet air of Hever, which blew all her scruples to ribbons and rags.

  She should have known it was too good to be true.

  She had enjoyed her new role as the “king’s sister.” It meant absence and presents—giving as well as receiving, but Henry had been generous to a graceful exit. She had a lot of money to spend from the properties he bestowed on her, and even more from her sudden facility at cards, the freedom to win without fear. She had played with him sometimes during the six months or so they were married, the cards a welcome means to avoid conversation. True, she had only learned to play to please her husband, and she had taken care not to appear to learn too quickly or too well at that, lest he consider being beaten at primero by his wife every bit as bad as her large breasts, as bad as her belly, soft and supple as horseflesh.

  It was apparent Henry valued her for a sister much more than he had a wife. And then that stupid girl, that slip of a thing with her sweet silly face and chest as flat as a boy’s, had made love with the manservant and that was it, beheaded on the Tower Green and Henry came looking for sympathy.

  Anne kept him off the drink, lest loss of reason and rage cause him to take offense at her face or her form or the color of her hair, the shape of her hood. It didn’t stop him weeping into her lap, moaning about the perfidy of women and his precious “rose without a thorn” he had sent to her death, little white fingers clutching the block and breathing in the stench of rot as she had in the marriage bed, except this time not smiling through it, pray God.

  “She humiliated me, Anne,” wept Henry, into the lap of the woman he had once described as a Flanders mare, openly repudiated as wife and sent into rural exile; into the lap of a woman who still heard furtive neighs when she walked in public and who had held her head high when faced with the child who was brought into her bed to fill her place. “I am disgraced.”

  “There, there, Your Majesty,” said Anne, her sympathy keen as the memory of axes and trying not to think of what his sniveling was doing to the lovely silk of her dress. “There’s none who can disgrace a king, no more than a sparrow can disgrace a hawk.”

  “Do you think so?” said Henry, lifting his massive head from her lap, hair disheveled and moustache wet with tears and snot, like a small boy who had fallen in front of company. “Do you really think so?”

  “I do,” said Anne. “I think whatever pleases you best, Your Majesty.”

  And then his great head was leaning against her bosom, against the giant breasts he had so disdained while she had been bound to him by law and church, and he was snuffling and half-sobbing still, slobbering at her flesh and reaching for the hem of her skirts.

  “Henry,” she could have said, “I am no longer your wife.” But for all that, he was still the king of England, still the man who cut down wives like wheat and always wanted what he should not, could not have, and there was nothing that was safe to say.

  And so Anne was silent, until Pandora found her scrubbing at her thighs in a corner of her bedroom, the king’s snores echoing from behind the curtains. Silently, Pandora pried the rag from clenched fists and led her to a place where Henry could not hear her anger; a place where Pandora’s box smoothed their languages for them and made communication easy.

  “That was revolting!” said Anne, face red with a humiliation she still was not used to, but she did not cry. She was too afraid to cry. “What if he wants me to do it again?”

  “It won’t be so bad the next time,” said Bluebeard’s wife, comforting.

  “You did not smell him,” said Anne. “What if he’s decided he likes a bit of flesh to cuddle with now? What if he wants me to come back to court with him? What if he starts on again about a Duke of York?” Not that he ever had with her, knowing perfectly well that she could never give him a son while he refused to lie with her, but now that hurdle was over and done with, it wouldn’t surprise her one whit if he fell back into form.

  “Do you not want children?” said Pandora. “This could be your chance, you know.”

  “I’m not sure children could make up for that,” snapped Anne. “I’ll never get the stink off me. And the worst part is I have to smile at him afterwards when I should be retching. He’s rotting from the inside out, rotten to the core!”

  “Then you’ve got to make him think you want him to take you back,” said Pandora. “It’s the only way to get safely away from him.”

  “Are you insane?” said Anne. “Four wives dead, and the block’s still warm from the last, like as not. No, thank you. I’m happy where I am.”

  “He’ll be suspicious if you don’t make up to him,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “And if there’s one thing that I know about husbands, it’s that they’re mean when they’re suspicious.”

  “He does always want what he can’t have,” said Anne, musing. “Fine. I’ll dangle freedom in front of him like it’s a marchpane piggy he’s not allowed to eat, and let him sweat over it. I don’t see why I should be the only one to suffer.”

  So when Henry woke in the bed he had done so much to stay out of, Anne was there, roly-poly naked and gazing at him with the most vacant expression of animal adoration she could muster. She’d made sure to be eating, with a plate of cold mutton in one hand, and there were shreds of it in her teeth and grease smeared about her face. She chewed with her mouth open, slowly, as if at cud.

  “Darling,” she simpered between bites. “My dearest one, my only.” The look of horror on his face was unmistakable, and Anne was hard-pressed not to cackle. Ten minutes later, Henry had waddled his great, reeking form from her chamber as fast as anyone had ever waddled, and was being hoisted onto his horse in what might have been termed an unseemly hurry.

  “Come back soon, my precious poppet!” Anne called after him, waving a handkerchief so hard her entire big, glossy body wobbled in the winter sunlight.

  The next day she wrote him a charming letter, perfectly polite and not once mentioning his night in her bed, saying how much she had enjoyed his visit and would he come again soon, please? And she continued to write him so daily. Soon her letters began to hint that if it was too much trouble for him to leave the court, she could join him there, if it was agreeable to his Majesty. When he finally replied, it was with stilted politeness, instructions to stay safely at home, and a chest of gold so enormously heavy it would fund her card habit for the next year, at least, even if she lost every bet she made.

  “He’s paying me off, like a whore,” said Anne, annoyed, but not so lost to reason that she didn’t sprinkle little drops of salted water from the kitchens over her sweet, sad acknowledgement of his letter. She was the good wife, the one that went quietly, and he would be pleased enough with her obedience to let her alone.

  And that would have been the end of it, if she hadn’t missed her monthlies and found herself, unexpectedly and against all odds, pregnant.

  “You better do something about that quick-smart, if you don’t want the king to know,” said Bluebeard’s wife, who now accompanied Pandora on her visits. “And don’t trust the servants, no matter how much you want to. None of mine ever warned me about axes . . . ”

  “They’re good girls, mostly,” said Anne. “Some meek as milk, and some sly like custard about to sour, but good girls like gold coin as well as any, I suppose, and a handful have a hankering to go to court. They don’t know yet that they’re better off out of it.”

  “He’ll have someone watching, on the off-chance,” said Pandora, and they spilt a little blood on the bed linens so it would look as if Anne’s bleeding had come upon her as usual.

  “Do I want to know where you got it?” said Anne, and Bluebeard’s wife smiled at her.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “We had chicken pot pie for dinner last night. Pandora’s pretty good at pastry when no one’s expecting her to make it, and when I chopped the head off the chicken I caught some of the spurts in
a basin for you.”

  “I suppose at least it wasn’t horse blood,” said Anne. She held some resentment, still, about the “Flanders mare” remark.

  “I can bring you some every month, if you like,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “It’ll buy you some time, at least, but that’s not going to help you decide what to do with the wee one. Have you given it any thought?”

  “It’s just that I don’t know how I feel about it,” said Anne. “I’d gotten used to the idea of not having any children.” She prodded at her stomacher as if it belonged to someone else, as if it was one of those unfamiliar dishes she had been presented with upon arriving in England, half-green with the seasick and dreaming of drowning and gills. “Especially not his children. As progeny go, they’re not a prepossessing lot. Not that I don’t enjoy spending time with them,” she added hastily.

  “It’s different when they’re your own,” said Pandora. “Or so I’ve heard.”

  And that was the crux of the issue. Anne could barely bring herself to picture a child, let alone one that stared out of a cradle at her with Mary’s bitter expression, with Elizabeth’s perfect mask, with little Edward’s determination to avoid amusement. She felt for the lad, she did, having arrived at a court more entertaining than her own, feeling awkward and heavy in her isolation, feeling prudish and proper and with a stick up her arse a mile wide, and not even the king’s, for all that. She thought, with time, she might have been able to find some understanding for the child, as a good stepmother should, but there was little enough contact now, and his dullness irritated her. It reminded her of what she had been like herself.

  “You got over it,” said Bluebeard’s wife, in as comforting a tone as she could manage after Anne had confessed, after Anne had swindled her, again, for satin and silk and sovereigns at cards. “Maybe he will too.”

  “Hopefully this one will be better at enjoying life,” said Anne, with a sudden, unpleasant twinge of maternal instinct. “Though God knows its father might stand in its way, like he does with the others. Especially the girls. I’m sure he thinks their smiles give him the gout.”

  “You could go home,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Take the baby back to Cleves.”

  “Back to my nasty brother?” said Anne. “In disgrace? Penniless and with a bastard babe? We’ve never been friends as it is. I’d be better off with Henry.”

  “Not if it was a girl,” said Pandora. “You might end up another wife on the block.”

  “What is it with men and axes?” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Maybe I should get one of my own, see how they like it. Something pretty. Maybe with a gold handle.”

  “That sounds like it would be very heavy to use,” said Anne, the ever-practical, before returning to her own concerns. “But what if it’s a boy?”

  “He might take the child from you,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Or you could be queen again.”

  “I would rather walk naked from Hever to Hampton,” said Anne. “At least humiliation doesn’t stink.”

  “Then there’s the matter of being the king’s ‘sister’ now,” said Pandora. “And I would remind you that one Anne’s already gone to the block for a daughter and accusations of incest.”

  “If I remained his ‘beloved sister,’ he’d be admitting to incest as well.”

  “Which would worry precisely no one if he also accused you of witchcraft,” said Pandora.

  “He wouldn’t do that to the mother of his son,” said Anne. “Surely not.”

  “You don’t know that you’re having a son,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “And you do know that the man you’re no longer married to is a monster with a passel of wives who oh-so-coincidentally all ended up dead. Which of these two things are you going to put your faith in?”

  “When you put it like that,” said Anne, “I’d rather not take chances. But we’re assuming I can have the baby and no one would know. Worst of all, I think, is what would happen if he found out I was keeping it from him. He wouldn’t care if it were a girl then. It’d be the trickery that’d send me to the block.”

  “We’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t find out,” said Pandora. “And if worst comes to worst, we can take you away somewhere safe.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re nice and plump,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “And those dumpy clothes from Cleves will actually be doing you a favor for once. I know you haven’t been wearing them, but maybe it’s time to dig them out of the back of the wardrobe. Just for a bit. Say you’re homesick or something.”

  It was a terrible excuse, and everyone saw right through it, even the stupidest of the maids, but out of pity they never pressed her. The king had lost his last wife and there was a sudden opening for queen again, and they had seen the blood on her sheets when he had visited, and all the blood since, and they were sorry for her, sorry that she was not able to go back. Sorry that, after everything, the king still did not want her; sorry that she was reduced to eating her feelings so to be the bigger woman. And Anne lay on her bed and wept. Wept through morning sickness that wasn’t as bad as all that, really, as long as she had a good thick porridge for breakfast that kept her feeling weighted down, as if at anchor and not sliding up and down upon the sickening ocean. Wept until her face was puffy and the people around her were too embarrassed to even look at her lest they set her off again.

  “I am sick, sick, sick of this mummery!” she wailed one morning, when her maids and ladies left her safe, they thought, and safely alone in her chambers to lament. “If I have to cry any more, I’m just going to stab something.”

  “Oh, but it will all be worth it!” said Pandora, rubbing Anne’s feet where the ankles had swollen up under her skirts. “Just think about seeing that precious little face!”

  “That’s hardly an incentive for the poor thing, Pandy,” said Bluebeard’s wife, who was arranging Anne’s hair into grief-tangled disarray. “If it’s a little boy, that precious face might end up looking like Henry’s. Although, they say he was a lovely child and handsome in his youth.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Anne, subsiding. “I’d not want even a handsome lad who resembled Henry. I’d live in fear he’d grow as monstrous as his sire. Pray God it’s a girl.”

  And it was. When her pains came, Anne bit her lips white and then to bleeding until it was time for bed and then, when her ladies were snuggled in for the night, helped by a concoction of warmed wine and sleeping powder, she stuffed round bolsters under her own covers and let Pandora help her through a door and into the geological portion of the museum.

  “There,” said Pandora, who had built a little nest there to be ready for babe and birth. “All safe here. You can scream your head off now, as much as you want.”

  “Like screaming ever helped anyone,” Anne grumbled, but scream she did, through an eternity of pushing and pain and the hot thick scent of blood. And the child slipped out into the hands of the woman who had been hired as nurse and nanny and midwife in one, and Anne was free to slump back, her belly deflating less than she had hoped but still enough to fit into her old dresses, the pretty ones she had gotten when she came to England and not the musty sacks she had been wearing in feigned homesickness and ill-health.

  “Is the child all right?” she said, and the red, squalling face was held up to hers, as unattractive as she had half expected it to be, coming from a mother put aside for the prettiness of others and a father grown stinking and monstrous.

  “She’s perfect, milady,” said the midwife. “What are you going to call her?”

  WHITECHAPEL

  The baby squalled as water was poured over her head. Anne had insisted on a baptism, and with no priest among them, the four women had had to shift for themselves. The water dripped from a golden goblet, off the baby’s head and into a large porcelain chamber pot Pandora had found two rooms over. “There, there, poppet,” she said, soothing in her role as godmother as Bluebeard’s wife went to refill the goblet with wine. The women passed it between them, dabbing a little onto the in
fant’s lips so she would not feel left out.

  “What are you going to name her?” said Pandora.

  “I thought about calling her after my mother,” said Anne. “Maria. It’s a good solid name, but when I think of my mother, all I can see are the letters she wrote me, saying how much she missed me. ‘I am loath to suffer your departure,’ she said, but she suffered it regardless. I don’t suppose she had much more of a choice than I did, packing me off to England and into the arms of that oaf.” She stroked the baby’s head with gentle fingers. It had been decided that Anne would return to Hever to protect her household and her family—however distant—from the tumult that would arise from her disappearance. The baby would remain within the museum under the charge of Whitechapel, the nurse hired for her care. Pandora had promised to bring Anne to visit on the regular, promised that she and Bluebeard’s wife would do the same, but it didn’t make the parting any easier.

  “My daughter has to live apart from me also, and that is repetition enough. I don’t need another reminder. So I’ve decided to name her after my sister instead, and my grandmother: Sibylle. Because it’s pretty and it’s family and because it has nothing to do with her father. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t have one.”

  Even so, the poor little thing had his hair, and that perhaps was another repetition and reminder too far. “Still,” said Anne, “it’s the only part of her that’s in any way distinctive. Except for it, she doesn’t look like either of us.”

  “We can always color it, milady,” said Whitechapel as she removed the chamber pot. “She doesn’t have to keep it if you don’t wish it. The little mite can be anything she wants to be.”

  “Did you hear that, Sibylle?” said her mother, in satisfaction. “You can be anything you choose. No stinking husbands and their poor little loves for you.”