Le Temps Viendra: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (40 page)

At my insistence to see Bess properly buried, and on account of the distress experienced both by my mother and me, my father agreed to wait for a few days before setting out for our return to Hever. We minimised contact with the outside world, whilst my father kept up a steady stream of correspondence with the King and the court, first at Waltham Abbey, then Hunsdon. Through these letters, we soon found out that George had fallen ill almost immediately upon arrival at Waltham. Predictably, the disease had swept through his body with rampant speed, yet death found no home there, and within two days he had considerably recovered, enough to write to my parents with great assurance of his health.

It was the fourth day after Bess’s death; with all our belongings packed and our affairs in order, we were ready to depart. I was about to leave my chambers when a messenger arrived from the King’s household. With no servants to attend us, I took delivery of the King’s message in person, dismissing the young man with a crown for his trouble. I paid little attention to his pallor; the beads of sweat forming upon his brow, or the look of agitation in his eyes. I put it all down to the gruelling ride, taken at full pace no doubt, to deliver the King’s message swiftly into the hands of Mistress Boleyn. How foolish I was! How careless!

Having dismissed the young gentleman, I turned away from the doorway, making my way to my writing desk. Sinking into the chair, I paused for a moment looking down at the letter I held in my hand; the now familiar stiff parchment was sealed with the Royal Seal, which kept secret Henry’s own privy thoughts. However, on this occasion, I was slightly apprehensive; I wondered what Henry would have to say to me. For I confess that a day earlier, having initially ignored the King’s daily ministrations requesting news of my health, I had finally written a rather stern letter to Henry expressing my displeasure and hurt at having been abandoned by him without any care for my well-being. I boldly questioned his true feelings and commitment towards me—in short Anne’s fiery indignation had got the better of me once more. In the cold light of day, somewhat sheepishly, I privately questioned whether I had overstepped the mark, stretching the King’s patience to beyond its limits. However, yet again, I had underestimated the potency of our love to smooth away disquiet and sweeten the bitter pill that I had forced His Majesty to swallow. Finally, taking a deep breath, I opened the letter with my finger and began to read,

To my mistress
.

The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me, disturbed and alarmed me exceedingly, and I should not have had any quiet without hearing certain tidings. But now, since you have as yet felt nothing, I hope, and am assured that it will spare you, as I hope it is doing with others. For when we were at Waltham Abbey, two ushers, two valet de chamber, and your brother, fell ill, but are now quite well; and since we have returned to your house at Hunsdon, we have been perfectly well, and have not, at present, one sick person, God be praised; and I think, if you would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would escape all danger. There is another thing that may comfort you, which is, that, in truth, in this distemper few or no women have been taken ill, and, what is more, no person of our court, and few elsewhere, have died of it
.

For which reason I beg you, my entirely beloved, not to frighten yourself, nor be too uneasy in our absence; for, wherever I am, I am yours, and yet we must sometimes submit to our misfortunes, for whoever will struggle against fate is generally but so much the farther from gaining his end: wherefore comfort yourself, and take courage, and avoid the pestilence as much as you can, for I hope shortly to make you sing, ‘le renvoye.’ No more at present, for lack of time, but that I wish you in my arms, but I might a little dispelled your unreasonable thoughts
.

Written by the hand of him who is and always will be yours
,

Im-H.R-mutable
.

I remained motionless staring at the letter; I realised that I was filled with a sense of relief that the King and I remained perfect lovers. Oh, how I adored these messages of love and longing, spawned from Henry’s own hand! It was a task which he undertook with great disdain for others, and yet in writing to me—to Anne—I only ever sensed great thoughtfulness and tenderness. Yet, I could never read one of Henry’s letters without a heavy sadness trailing behind in its wake; for Henry’s protestations of immutable love would ultimately prove to be only empty words. Not for the first time, I wondered exactly when would be the turning point in Henry and Anne’s relationship; when would Henry’s love sour and turn to hate, when would his desire turn to revulsion, and when would his longing turn to indifference.

I folded the letter carefully, placing it in my purse; I also made a note to myself to put it with the others upon my arrival at Hever. In retrospect, somebody, probably my mother, must have done so on my behalf, for by the time I arrived at Hever, the sweating sickness would have taken hold of my body with vicious potency and terrible consequences.

I remember very little of what happened to me after I left Greenwich. It started with an ominous sense of foreboding that something terrible was about to happen, the like of which I have never experienced before. I swear to God that I thought that I was going to die and yet, for a short time, all had seemed well. Then there was a little pain in my head and chest, and by the time we arrived at Hever Castle, I was drenched in the most terrible sweat. I vaguely remember my father carrying me up to my bedchamber with no regard for his own well-being. Although I was becoming delirious from the fever, my mind was coherent enough to beg him to get away from me, for I feared for his life.

It is strange that in such extreme circumstances, I remember more than anything that I was just so glad to be home; if I were to die, I wanted to die there, that idyllic place that had so gently nurtured me as I had found my way in Anne’s world. I thought of my dear friends, of my brother and of Henry; their faces, voices and my memories swimming in and out of my consciousness. Within two short hours of the first onset of symptoms, I began to lose focus as I slipped helplessly into unconsciousness. The last thing that I remember seeing was my mother leaning over me, shaking me violently. I knew that she was trying to keep me awake, for it was well told that the chances of survival were greater if the patient did not lapse into sleep. Echoing some way off in the distance, I could hear her desperate, final pleas,

‘Anne, Anne . . . dear child, wake up!’

That was the last thing I remember. Everything suddenly collapsed rapidly into blackness, and in that moment, I lost all that I had come to know and love so dearly.

Part Three

Chapter One

Hever Castle

June 21, 2007

‘I think she’s coming round,’ said the calm, disembodied voice, which softly pricked my awareness. Suddenly, I felt my eyelid being lifted gently and a bright light flashed painfully in my right eye. I flinched automatically, twisting my head away from the light which blinded me and caused a searing pain to tear through my skull. I remember that I felt as though I was suffocating, although I couldn’t understand why at first. Then as I began to regain my footing in the world, I was aware of something covering my nose and mouth and half conscious, I tried to reach up and tear it away from my face. However, my hand was caught, and the disembodied voice spoke evenly to me once more,

‘It’s all right, Anne. It is just an oxygen mask . . . You collapsed and passed out but you’re in safe hands now, everything will be all right. We will have you to hospital in no time.’ ‘Hospital!’ I couldn’t understand what they were telling me. I fought valiantly to bring my mind into focus, as I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. But each time I surfaced above the swell of unconsciousness, I seemed to be dragged back down into its depths once more. Fragments of memories were interwoven with a mutable reality which seemed to slip and slide in and out of my grasp, changing form and leaving me lost in a labyrinth of confusion.

Suddenly, my mind alighted on what I was struggling to remember, the reason for my passing out in the first place—the sweating sickness; I recalled how I had fallen ill on my journey back to Hever from Greenwich Palace; I remembered my father carrying me to my bedchamber and my mother, yes . . . my mother; I heard myself cry out for her.

‘Mother . . . !’ I tried to speak but I could hardly form the words, and they came forth in nothing more than a parched whisper.

‘It’s okay, Anne. We are here to look after you and you will be fine now.’ I forced my eyelids to flicker open, and saw that leaning over me was a young, dark haired woman whom I did not recognise. I must have looked incredibly confused, because she was dressed in clothes that for a few seconds, I couldn’t place; they seemed so alien to me. The woman smiled down at me reassuringly and spoke again,

‘Anne, you’re at Hever Castle. Do you remember being here? I struggled to focus through the grogginess and pain which dominated my senses. I managed to nod, before she continued, ‘You were taken ill and somebody called an ambulance. I think you may have had a fit and we need to get you to hospital to find out what has caused it. Do you understand me?’ I nodded again, almost imperceptibly. But already beyond the veil of my incapacity, a knot of panic was forming in my stomach. A slow and painful realisation was taking shape in my mind; a realisation that somehow I had been ripped away from the 16th century and that, without my desire or consent, I had been sucked back into my modern day life.

Slowly, I was lifted onto a stretcher and carried with some considerable difficulty down through familiar rooms, corridors and staircases of the castle. I strained my neck to catch a glimpse of the home that had become my sanctuary, the idyll that I had grown to love so dearly during my time spent in Anne’s world. It was difficult to do, not least because of the blinding pain which had suddenly returned with such ferocity. As I was gently manoeuvred down the main staircase, I managed to regain my senses sufficiently to catch sight of the portraits of Anne and Mary Boleyn in the main Entrance Hall. Anne stared out at me enigmatically. Her face was so familiar to me that the image was no longer a flat, two-dimensional portrait but a vibrant, living entity, who shared all my untold secrets. This hallway had been the place in which my adventure had begun, and I simply couldn’t believe that I had lost her.

A torrent of tumultuous thoughts swirled through my mind, fighting their way through the pain which insistently throbbed in my head; thoughts of the people that I had grown to love and feared that I may never see again. Tears began to flow down my face, though I didn’t have the strength to cry out in grief. They saw my tears and thought I was afraid for myself. They couldn’t know, of course, the true reason for my distress, and although they tried to soothe my anxieties, as I was carried away in the ambulance, I was inconsolable; I could not bear the thought of leaving behind my beloved Hever and my ghostly family, who had, over twelve glorious months, become my world.

I felt I was dying. As we sped along narrow country lanes towards the nearest city hospital, excruciating pain and overwhelming surges of nausea washed over me. I had never experienced a headache like it before, and I vomited several times; the retching only intensified the pain until I cried out in blinding agony. The lady talked about giving me something to relieve the pain and alleviate my sickness. Thankfully, she didn’t wait for me to respond, because I just wasn’t able to do so. I was vaguely aware of something being injected through the needle in a vein at my elbow. Within minutes, I felt a blissful release as the intense, white hot pain which tore through my head, and the associated sickness, began to abate. For a time, I must have slipped once again into unconsciousness. Faces with whom I had become so familiar: Henry; Elizabeth and Thomas Boleyn; my sister, Mary; my brother, George; Nan; Margery; my uncle Norfolk and even Cardinal Wolsey, slipped in and out of focus. Each spoke to me earnestly and with great urgency across time. I felt they were trying to hold onto me, but I couldn’t form the words to respond to their pleas. I reached out towards them, imploring them to help me; but every time I did, they faded into shadows and I was alone once more.

Our arrival at the hospital was a blur of white light; a parade of well-meaning, concerned faces, whose voices continued to drone in and out of my awareness. I was cognizant of being rushed into what looked like a scanner of some sort, then not long after, meeting a fair-haired man who introduced himself as Mr. Harris. He told me that he was the consultant neurosurgeon on call, and that he would be taking over my care. I remember his kind face leaning over me, gently squeezing my hand, explaining carefully that I had a cerebral aneurysm which had ruptured and was bleeding into my brain, and that they needed to operate on me as a matter of urgency in order to seal off the leaking blood vessel.

I was being prepped for theatre when the nurses asked me for my next of kin. I tried to speak, to tell them that I was an orphan in this world with no siblings; to tell them about Daniel, but I was too weak and confused. I heard myself say his name aloud, but as hard as I tried to remember his other details, they frustratingly lay just beyond my grasp. The last thing I recall was scrawling my signature on a consent form for the operation. Then I was subsumed into the inky blackness once more.

It was all a blur, a frenetic whirl of activity that swept me along in its wake. After it was all over, Mr. Harris told me that I was lucky to have survived, although he had found the ruptured aneurysm easily enough, and repaired it without complications. For a few days, apparently, I had precariously teetered on the delicate edge between life and death; the unknown frontier of what lies beyond this material world was almost tangible to me in my semi-conscious state. Fate, however, played her hand. Just as I was aware that in my 16th century life, Anne had been spared from sweating sickness, so too, miraculously, I had been spared from my own brush with death.