Heart of Gold

by May McGoldrick

  “It is about the least expensive thing that Henry gives me, Elizabeth.” She nearly sneered at her sister. “How could I refuse him?”

  Elizabeth bit her tongue. This was hardly the greeting—this was hardly the woman—she had expected. She again simply watched as the younger woman made her way around the room, studying every furnishing, every trinket in sight.

  “Not bad, for marrying a Scot.” She turned to Elizabeth and gave a half sarcastic smile. “I can see you’ve done well for yourself. He’s certainly the best that this savage place has to offer, for what that’s worth. But tell me, dear sister, what did you have to do to get him to marry you?”

  Elizabeth stared at her sister, her anger gathering.

  “Not what you are doing to get Henry to marry you.” Glancing away, Elizabeth moved quickly toward the painting she’d been working on. The canvas faced away from Anne. She’d be damned if she would show the brat what she’d done for her. Grabbing a white tarp from the table, Elizabeth tossed it over the painting.

  “Temper, temper. I can see not much has changed after all these years.” She walked casually toward Elizabeth in mincing steps, swinging her hips exaggeratedly from side to side. “I see I’m still not worthy of seeing your work. Still think you can hide things from me, don’t you?”

  Elizabeth paused. She had begun this meeting all wrong. Anne had no sooner walked in her door than Elizabeth had begun to judge her. Elizabeth admonished herself silently. She must give her younger sister a chance.

  “I’m sorry, Anne,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to be so inhospitable. Perhaps we could begin again.”

  “You and I? Begin again?” The young woman stood facing her in the center of the room, her laugh short and joyless. “I wouldn’t even bother.”

  “Why are you here, Anne?” Elizabeth asked shortly. “It must have been a long journey for you.”

  She smiled. “To pay you back, sister dear, for all your kindnesses of the past.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Ha!” Anne laughed again, loudly and without mirth. “Well, we do agree on something.”

  “Then?” Elizabeth could feel herself getting edgy as the young woman approached. Her sister’s large black eyes were locked on her, and Anne looked like an animal ready to pounce.

  “As I told you before, I came here to repay you.” She stopped on the opposite side of the covered canvas that separated them. “But you are correct, Elizabeth. I don’t owe you anything. It is you who owes me. So I am here to collect.” Anne suddenly reached out and yanked at the sheet, unveiling the canvas as she moved beside her sister. Her eyes scanned the painting.

  The young woman’s laugh made Elizabeth cringe. It was a cold and hollow laugh. She could hear no ring of emotion, just an emptiness that reverberated throughout the room.

  “I’ve heard people speak of your talent.” Anne reached into the cup that sat on the small table and grabbed one of Elizabeth’s brushes. Without hesitation, she dipped it into the paint of her sister’s palette. “It’s true, you do indeed have a talent for your art.”

  Anne jabbed at the painting with the brush and, hearing Elizabeth’s gasp, turned and gave her sister another malevolent smile as she continued. “But you are blind, dear sister. Blind, blind, blind. And simple.”

  Elizabeth watched in horror as Anne used one stroke after another to cover with broad, black marks the portrait of Henry sitting on the chair.

  “You see, if you had any wit at all, you would have depicted me sitting in the chair, and that pathetic old man standing with his hands outstretched in supplication.”

  “You cannot control the world with a stroke of a brush, Anne.” Elizabeth reached out and grabbed the brush from her sister’s hands. Anne released it without any struggle and turned her attention again toward the room.

  “Aye, I can.” She smiled with a backward glance. “I, unlike you, Elizabeth, live in the real world. It’s true, I am not like you and Mary at all, you know. I am smart. I use my brain. I observe, I plan, and then I execute. And sometimes, just for the sport of it, I look for weaknesses in people, then I crush them. Just look at what I did to you. A soft, heartwrenching letter. I knew that’s all it would take to get you to meet with me. It worked.”

  Elizabeth scanned her sister’s face for some recognizable feature. For some hint of familial feeling that might connect them.

  We are sisters, she thought. Sisters. You don’t have to lie, to pretend, in order to see me. But after hearing Anne, Elizabeth felt herself withdrawing. She did not want to deal with this young woman at a personal level. At any level.

  “This English king is a great fool,” Elizabeth whispered. “How could he—or anyone—be so blind as to fall for you?”

  “You are so right, sister!” Anne swung around. “He is a great fool. The greatest kind, a royal one. Oh, I have watched him for years. From the time I moved into his court circle, I’ve seen how he treats us. The new faces. The new mistresses. Each new woman tumbling into bed with the arrogant lecher. One after another they go. He relieves his lust in them, and then they are gone. Out of sight, and permanently out of mind. Henry is disgusting, Elizabeth, like all the rest of them. The man’s brain is in his codpiece.”

  As she sat herself on the tall, three-legged stool in front of the mirror, Anne Boleyn pulled her skirts up above her ankles. Taking in the reflection, she raised her eyes and smiled at her sister in the glass. “I’ll share a little secret, sister dear. I never, ever, let him touch me. No sweet fondling, no tender caresses. Nothing. And after six months of this slow torture, he is mad about me. He is going crazy with desire.”

  “Why doesn’t he just take someone else?”

  “Oh, he does. I know he does. But, my dear sweet Elizabeth, those girls are simply substitutes for me.” She cast a glance at her sister. “It’s true!”

  Elizabeth threw the tarp over the painting again and moved to the window. The streets were bustling with activity as laborers wending their way home now mingled with the street vendors. A woman hawking poultry called out to the passing crowd and held two live chickens aloft.

  Elizabeth wished now that her sister had never come. Her eyes scanned the thoroughfare. She was glad Ambrose and Jaime had not yet returned. She was embarrassed. Embarrassed to present Anne to her husband the ‘loving’ sister she had presumed her to be.

  “I know he had a fondness for Mary,” Anne droned on. “He used her body and then threw her out. And then he wanted you, but you ran. You are simple, Elizabeth. You could have had the most powerful man in the world at your beck and call, if you’d handled it correctly, but you ran away.”

  Elizabeth turned to face her sister.

  “But me,” Anne continued, not about to be interrupted. “I went after him. I used my charm, my wit. After the two of you, I knew he liked our looks, our builds. Henry is very particular in such matters, you know. So as I got older, I learned to become a predator, and he the prey.”

  Looking back in the mirror, she pushed back a loose lock of jet black hair behind her ears. “I used seduction. I pretended to want him. And...I gave him a glimpse of what’s to come.”

  She gave a loud laugh. “There are so many advantages to living at court. So many opportunities to give him just a quick glimpse of my maidenly charms. Aye, show him the curve of a breast, the shape of an uncovered leg...then hide it. What pleasure to simply stand there, to let him see, to let him drool. To watch the fool go hard. And then to blush, to back away. What matchless enjoyment to say, as he gets near, ‘After our wedding, my great bear. We must save something for our wedding night, love.’ Then I retreat—my ‘honor’ preserved, his lecherous desires provoked still further.”

  “This is a dangerous game you play, Anne. What’s going to stop him from taking you against your will?”

  “Ah, Elizabeth, you think I’m a fool? He won’t,” she said with conviction. “I have convinced him that there is something mystical about the feelings between us. The go
at believes there is something almost ‘holy’ about me. And he is quite superstitious, you know. I’ve convinced him that Queen Catherine cannot bear him a son because heaven has frowned upon their marriage. I once even hinted that I have heard voices. Angelic voices that told me his marriage to Catherine is a reviled and incestuous union between a man and his brother’s widow, and that the Tudor reign will end with Henry because of it. I’ve spend many an hour preaching to him the value of virtue and the utmost importance of my innocence on the marriage night. And he believes me, Elizabeth. He believes me!”

  “Anne, think a moment of what you are doing. Whatever do you think will happen if you cannot give him the heir he is after?”

  “There is no question,” she said dismissively. “When I am queen, I will.”

  Elizabeth watched Anne as she gazed at herself in the mirror. In that fleeting, unguarded moment, she looked like the innocent child Elizabeth remembered. Whatever had ever happened to her, Elizabeth didn’t know. But this was not the young woman she had expected today.

  “Did your ‘voices’ tell you that, as well, Anne? That you shall bear him a son?”

  “I weary of this discussion,” she responded lazily. Then, pushing herself back sharply from the mirror, Anne stood and whirled, her face hard and sneering.

  “And this brings me back to the reason for my visit today.”

  “I thought it was sisterly love that brought you here. The ‘loneliness,’ as you so artfully put it in your letter.”

  The young woman’s expression went cold, her face paling at Elizabeth’s words. “Nay, I got over that years ago—not long, in fact, after being deserted by my own sisters.”

  Then, for the first time since Anne walked through the door, Elizabeth saw a hint of pain in her sister’s eyes.

  “We had to leave you, Anne.”

  “You...you abandoned me! You left me behind!” She whispered the words, her eyes taking on a faraway look, as if she was reminding herself of what had happened. “One moment I had a family, older sisters whom I looked up to. Sisters whom I loved. Sisters whom I thought loved me. And then, the next moment, I found myself rejected, thrown aside, forgotten.”

  Elizabeth took a step toward her. “My God, Anne. That’s not the way—”

  “Stop,” she ordered. “Save your lies and your breath. You’ll need them in a few moments.”

  “But you have to hear me. The reason Mary and I ran—”

  “Mary and you,” she repeated. Listen to yourself. Mary and you. It always was just Mary and you.” She took a breath and turned toward the window. “You two cared only for each other and no one else. You shared your affection, your time, your secrets with her. But I was your sister, too. What did you ever do for me?”

  “You had my love. Whatever I felt for Mary, I felt for you. Whatever I did for Mary, I did for you. As far as my paintings, you were too young to be shown my work.” Elizabeth felt sorrow creeping into her heart. She had been the reason. She herself. She was responsible for Anne becoming the woman she’d become. “You were strong, Anne. You were a smart child. At times it might have seemed that I gave more attention to Mary, but it was because she needed it. She was weak in so many ways.”

  “Standing in the Field of Cloth of Gold with an inferno of tents burning around me, I needed someone, too.” Anne stabbed quickly at a tear that got away, dashing it from her pale cheek. “You ran to the fiery tent. I saw you. Wearing the friar’s clothing. I ran toward you. Excited. Relieved. But you called for Mary. Only for Mary. Then I stood back and watched. You fought the flames, fought the people for the only sister you cared for. I stood there, scared...alone.” Anne turned abruptly toward Elizabeth, facing her head on. “Then you just disappeared. You and Mary both. You left me for good. No word, no message, no farewell.”

  Elizabeth moved quickly across the floor to Anne and took hold of her limp, ice cold hands.

  “I had to run, Anne. I was being followed. I had no other choice. But leaving that place, the Golden Vale, as we did—we hardly knew what was to become of us. Everything before us was so uncertain.”

  Elizabeth gazed into the downturned face of her sister. How could she explain fears that now seemed so distant?

  “Meeting with you, telling you of all that had happened, all that was happening, would have meant putting your life in jeopardy. I loved you too much. I couldn’t do that to you. And in taking Mary...” Elizabeth paused. “Mary had contracted the pox and, more than that, she was with child. King Henry’s child. She had gone to Father, but she felt that he had turned his back on her, that he wouldn’t help her.”

  Anne draw her hands out of Elizabeth’s and stepped back. “Sir Thomas explained it all. I was a child, but still he explained it all.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That you ran away in direct defiance of the king. That to spite the family you wouldn’t become Henry’s mistress. He said you took Mary, since you loved her best. And I was left behind because I was nothing to you. To either of you. He told me what I already knew, that I was not wanted.”

  “That was a lie!” Elizabeth blurted out. “It is true that I didn’t want to go to Henry’s bed. I didn’t want my body to be sold by my own father. But I didn’t leave you because I loved you less.”

  “It’s too late for this.” Anne cried in anguish, starting to back toward the door. “I had to learn, Elizabeth. I had to learn early on that I had no one. No one who would care for me.”

  “I cared for you. Believe me, Anne. You said you saw me by the fires. Well, did you see my face? The bloody face that our father had given me?”

  Elizabeth pushed her hair back and showed her sister the still visible scar on her cheek. She knew from the look in Anne’s eyes that she remembered.

  “That night,” Elizabeth continued, “in that field, my world toppled. I went from being beaten by my own father to witnessing a vicious act of treachery and then murder. I was chased and nearly raped by the same brute who committed the murder. The same one who had my tent burned down. Aye, the same man who then tracked me like I was some animal.”

  “It’s too late, Elizabeth,” Anne whispered as she reached the door. Her hand rested on the latch. “It’s too late for explanations. The die is cast. It’s time for you to pay.”

  Elizabeth stood, one hand stretched out to her sister. She didn’t know what Anne meant, but a cold void in the pit of her stomach told her that something lay beyond the heavy oak door. Nonetheless, she had to try to make her sister listen, to make her understand.

  “I fled from the Field of Cloth of Gold without any word because of one man, Anne.” She took a step toward her younger sister. “The same man who hunted me down years later in Troyes. The same man who is responsible for Mary’s death. I was the one who was supposed to die there, Anne, but Mary stepped into the knife’s path.”

  Anne stood at the door, silent, taking in every word.

  “I want you to know the truth. It’s time for you to hear what I couldn’t tell you on that field.” Elizabeth took another step toward her sister. “He had betrayed his king. Then he murdered the French Lord Constable, the one man who could reveal his treachery. But there was a witness. I was the witness. He has been after me ever since. Killing Mary...that was not enough. It is I he wants. And now I hear he stands in your way.”

  “Garnesche,” Anne murmured.

  “Aye, Sir Peter Garnesche,” Elizabeth repeated. “Anne, you must use everything I have told you to threaten him with ruin. I... I cannot undo what has been done, but if marrying Henry is the thing that you most desire, if that is the goal you seek, then by all means use the truth to keep Garnesche at bay. But you must be careful; he is a devil—as ruthless a killer as ever walked on the earth.”

  Anne looked down at her hands, then her eyes ever so slowly moved up until they met Elizabeth’s. “But you see, I have already found a way to deal with the man. He no longer presents any problem for me.”

  “He doesn’t?”

&nbs
p; Anne shook her head. “I told you before, I had to learn early, Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes riveted on Anne’s knuckles, white from her grip on the door latch.

  “I’ve made a pact with him.” Anne opened the door slowly on its hinges. “I want Henry. He’ll stay out of my way, so that I can have him. Garnesche wants you, Elizabeth. So in return, I stay out of his way, so that he can have you. It’s plain and simple. You owe me at least that much.”

  The door stood fully open now, and Elizabeth watched in horror as the giant Englishman stepped into the room.

  “It was...very enlightening...seeing you, sister.” Anne’s eyes were troubled, but her voice was clear. “This time, however, I am the one who must be leaving.”

  Chapter 31

  Peter Garnesche gloated, his eyes full of malice, as the heavy oak door swung shut behind the departing Anne.

  Elizabeth backed unconsciously away from the door, her eyes scanning the room for something to use for protection. She could see nothing that might be effective in fighting off the giant. Elizabeth had been betrayed, and she was now at the villain’s mercy. She looked into the knight’s swarthy face, at the eyes that always hinted of madness.

  Elizabeth’s face hardened. Though her insides were quivering with fear, she was determined not to show it. No matter what happened to her, she would never give this animal the satisfaction of seeing the terror within her.

  “Get out!” she commanded, her voice husky and forceful. “Get out of my house.”

  “Always the fighter,” Garnesche sneered. “Well, I didn’t come all this way just to leave.”

  “One step closer and a house full of men will come crashing through that door.”

  With an air that was almost leisurely, Garnesche pulled a dagger from his belt and held it out before him. The sharp point was aimed directly at her throat. “Your porter was the only man I could find. And I’m fairly certain he won’t come crashing in.”