1526
She was a haze of perfumed skirts. A delicate storm of purple silk, lightning flashing in her eyes as she danced. The jewels at her neck shone by the light of a hundred candles; the pearls elegantly sewn around the edge of her headdress sparkled.
"He's looking at you." George said in her ear. His hand had grasped hers in mid-air and as their hands separated, the music stopped and the dancing couples formed lines facing each other, her eyes glanced - just once - up at the dais.
She bit back a smile; he was watching her. His fingers, each bedecked with rubies and diamonds, were curled under his chin. He leaned an elbow on the carved arm of his throne. His fiery red hair was like a beacon, the candlelight shining in his perfectly green eyes, the shade of a summer meadow. Anne bit her lower lip, sinking into a low curtsey as the king rose from his seat. She watched as the queen tried - and failed - to catch his eye. She watched as Queen Katherine looked forlorn for the briefest of seconds, and then composed herself and watched emotionlessly as her husband moved slowly, purposefully, towards the girl he had his eye on.
He stood before her. His hand lifted her chin and her dark eyes met his. Silently she rose, and with one look towards the musicians, the king started the music up again. Only this time, no one else was dancing.
Anne half felt that the world had stopped. Her hand was twinned with that of the most powerful man in the world, and the very thought sent a thrill rushing through her veins.
The music stopped. The king left, with little more than a parting smirk. Anne was left standing, her heart racing and her chest heaving.
"He's noticed you, sister." George said smugly as they left, throwing an arm around her shoulders. "My sister is now the most talked about person at court! How lucky I am to be related to her." He said with a laugh. Anne jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, but couldn't keep the smirk from off her face. She had done it, she had attracted the king's attention. Only unlike her sister, unlike countless of the king's other mistresses, Anne didn't plan on giving herself up to him like that. No, Anne thought with a cunning little glint in her eyes, I will be far more than another of the king's mistresses.
1527
The wind was in her hair as she ran. Her slender hands held up her deep burgundy skirts to keep it from the damp grass, and as her breathing grew heavy, the tightness of her bodice made it hard to breathe. She stopped for breath, raising a pale hand to her collarbone. Her fingers traced the gems that lay in the hollow of her throat as a smile crept over her lips. She heard a branch snap behind her, and froze.
"Caught you."573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9NazJul8sx
His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer to him.
"I had no doubt that you would, your majesty." She said softly. His hands traced a path over her waist, stroking the gems laced into the fabric that he had gifted her. Her dark hair lay over one shoulder, and he pressed a kiss to the dark tresses that he loved so much. Anne Boleyn was dark; her dark hair and her dark eyes thrilled him, enticed within him a passion that he had never known before. A fire had been lit in his gut ever since he first caught sight of her. He was blind to all others, deaf to the advice his closest advisors gave him. He wanted her, and he wouldn't stop until he got her.
"This heart," the king muttered, running his fingers over the edge of her bodice and placing his hand over where her heart was hammering. "It is beating too fast. You must not exert yourself, my lady. I should be beside myself if ought ever came to you."
"Ought never shall, your grace." Anne said, turning in his arms. "Not whilst I have the love of the king of England." She said sweetly. "In any case, this heart is not mine to command." She said with a shrug. "It is yours to do with as you please."
"Then I shall make it my queen. I shall treasure it for eternity and decorate it in jewels. It shall be my most prised possession." He declared regally, stroking her cheek with his fingers, the gold of his rings cold to the touch and cool on her skin.
"And I shall be the most happy, sire." She answered, leaning into his embrace. She pictured a crown upon her head, felt the weight of it upon her brow and relished in it. He was going to make her his queen, and Anne was convinced it was what she was born for. This was bliss, sheer bliss, and she could have sworn that for all the chances in the world, nothing was ever going to tear her down.573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡExqPDu8kbg
1536573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLeCBIaiKk6
It had gone dark. All the candles had burnt out and the only light she could see was the dimness of the moonlight, streaming weakly through the narrow window. The stone ledge underneath the window was cold against her skin, her thin nightshift doing nothing to stop the chill. She leaned her head on the thick glass pane, the coolness of it soothing her forehead. A tear threatened to spill over, but she refused to let it. Breathing deeply, she glanced around the chamber.573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSUUwCfl9HS
It was hardly a dungeon, she said to herself. The bed was large and covered in lavish covers. There was a table and chairs, and a fireplace that could have housed a large fire if they'd have given her any firewood. She'd stayed here before. Here she'd slept the night before her coronation. The night before she paraded through London to Westminster to be crowned, when people had cheered and crowds had gathered.
Look at me now, Anne thought bitterly. She was in the queen's chambers, that was true. It didn't make being a prisoner any better.
She was to die tomorrow. They'd told her that. Thomas Cromwell had visited and told her she was to lose her head. The king had annulled their marriage and made their daughter - their tiny, precious Elizabeth - a bastard. Anne's heart had splintered at the news.
She had loved Henry, once. It seemed so long ago now, but once, oh, once she had been happy. She had been the queen. She had been with child, and the king adored her, and she could spend her days sitting by a warm fire with her beloved dog in her lap and a child in her belly, her poets composing and her musicians playing. There was intelligent discussion and religious debate and Anne had felt that this, this, is what she was meant for. With her careful encouragement, Henry had disbanded the monasteries. He had reformed the church. He had overhauled the way religion was practiced in England... and it was all down to her.
Those days were long gone.573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzyXdkdUELI
Henry had sworn he loved her. He had promised her the world. He had held her softly and kissed her forehead, he had touched her like she was priceless and irreplaceable. And then he had decided he had tired of her. She was accused of adultery and treason and put on trial, though the charges were false and they all knew it. She was condemned to death by the man that had sworn to love her for a thousand years.573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡka6nq3mdd2
He was already planning to marry Jane Seymour. Anne was little more than an inconvenience, and rather than divorcing her and marrying Jane, Henry had decided to divorce Anne from her head. He had become cruel and impatient. Tyranny ran through his heart like a shard of ice, and the man that had once declared his evergreen love of her had signed her death warrant without a second thought.
She could see the pale silhouette of the scaffold they had erected in the grounds of the Tower. It made her stomach churn and her heart race, knowing that come tomorrow she would be here no longer, and knowing that in the morning she would mount those steps as a traitor and not a queen. A frenchman would swing a sword at her neck and it would be over.
In light of things, sleep was impossible. She almost wanted to laugh, for in her youth Anne had regarded the impossible simply as something only that lesser beings could not accomplish. Impossible meant nothing to Anne Boleyn. They had said that it was impossible for the king to divorce his wife, Katherine. They had said it was impossible that the king would make her his queen instead. 573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVkXcMwfCJn
And yet. 573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz1Kw9whwnn
And yet Anne prevailed.573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡooY7vz7Kex
Impossible had meant nothing to her. But now, as she sat with her face pressed against cold glass and wished for sleep, she began to find that the impossible had finally caught up with her.573Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbI8Ffq5uG2
The executioner had been delayed. Lord, Anne almost wanted to laugh. She had prepared herself for her death and now the lord devised new ways to test her.
"I am sorry." She said to Kingston, the man who had brought her the message. "I had hoped to be dead by now and past my pain." She said with a smile.
Kingston, with his stupidly docile face and his irritatingly literal way of thinking, blinked slowly.
"I am told there will be no pain, my lady."
Now she laughed. She wanted to hit him around the head, to declare that the pain of the sword was a hundred times less than the pain in her heart. Instead, she simply laughed.
"Well, I have heard it said that the executioner is very good." She said with a giggle. "Besides!" She exclaimed. Her eyes were wide, almost manic. "I have only a little neck." Her slender hands wrapped themselves around her neck as she laughed, leaving poor Kingston bewildered. He bowed in respect and left swiftly. Anne continued to laugh, hysteria settling into her bones.
She forced her feet forward.
A crowd had gathered for her private execution, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes and curse the king. Her ladies walked behind her. Some shed tears.
With a jolt, as she mounted the scaffold that had been prepared for her death, she noticed the wooden arrow chest lying to one side. It was lined with fabric and Anne realised that it was going to be her coffin. The king couldn't even care enough to have her a proper coffin made, she mused bitterly.
She sank to her knees, looking at the grey May sky and the ravens that soared overhead. Someone placed a blindfold over her eyes, and she saw no more. The cold crept into her kneecaps that hurt from kneeling and she could hear the murmur of the crowd and the footsteps of the swordsman as he approached.
She did not think. She kept her mind focussed on the prayers that fell from her lips, and when the French swordsman raised his sword, her last thoughts were of the child that she left behind, of her Elizabeth, another of the king's bastard daughters. Elizabeth, she prayed, would remember her mother. She prayed with all her might that when her daughter thought of her, she thought of more than the woman that was executed by her husband on false charges of adultery. She thought of Elizabeth as queen, and hoped that one day, if ever a crown did grace Elizabeth's brow, that she would make a better ruler than her father.
A/N: Anne Boleyn married King Henry VIII in 1533 and was executed in 1536. She was the first queen to be executed in England, and the charges against her were almost certainly false. On the very day of her execution, Henry became engaged to Jane Seymour. Eventually though, Anne's daughter would become one of England's greatest rulers, with the Elizabethan age often called a 'golden age'. Elizabeth never forgot her mother; she reportedly kept Anne's 'A' necklace (a portrait shows Elizabeth wearing it) and a ring she wore had a portrait of her mother hidden inside.
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