“Do not speak that way, my lady. You must remain calm for the sake of the child.”
“My son.”
“Your son. Look, I have relaxing herbs, lavender and camomile. Take some and breathe them in; they will help your body to rest.”
“And what about my mind, Thomasin? What will help my mind to rest when they speak against me daily, and I might die in childbed, and Henry is already lining up my replacement?”
“Hush now, you will work yourself up. None of these things are true. You will deliver a son and many more, I have no doubt.”
“Don’t you? Like all the astrologers, all so confident, they even predict the day.”
“And which day will it be, according to their work?”
“That’s the thing. They all choose a different day, I suppose, hoping to be the one that is rewarded. This is what I am reduced to, a mere body for men to wager upon.”
“Is that what you really think?”
Anne narrowed her eyes.
“This isn’t the Anne I recall — the one who blazed with confidence and pride. Where has she gone? You are on the verge of your greatest triumph, and yet you speak of this.”
Anne reached out her hand for the herbs and held a bouquet of dried lavender to her nose. “You know what he said to me?”
Thomasin had some inkling after her conversation with Sir Thomas.
“That he could cast me down as easily as he had raised me up.”
“I am sure that was said in the heat of anger. The king does not mean that.”
“Oh, but I think he does. I have come to know the man I married, far better than I ever knew him before. He has it within him to do it.”
“Come now, this is fear speaking. Breathe deeply. You need to rest. You are queen; you are secure. You have carried a healthy, strong child to term, who will soon be born, and then nothing will touch your position, not as the mother of a prince.”
“I will be, won’t I? Secure?”
“Yes, indeed. You already are.”
Anne gave a deep sigh. “My father brought you here?”
“Yes.”
“He told me he had, and I liked it not at the time. He told me how you heard the man hiding in the corridor, at my coronation feast.”
“I was in the right place. It was fortune.”
“Good fortune. You brought me good fortune that day. Perhaps you will again.”
“I will do all I can to assist, my lady.”
“I know you were loyal to Catherine. I admired that loyalty, but I am queen now.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps we might forget the past. Look to the future.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
“How strange things have become.” Anne looked towards the windows. “It is so dark in here, so very dark. I will dine in the hall tonight, as I have not yet formally retired. God knows I shall spend enough days cloistered away in here that I do not need to begin yet.”
