“I beg your Majesty...”
“You may beg anything you wish an you say you love me.”
She repeated the old argument. “Your Majesty, there can be no question of love between us...I would never be your mistress.”
“Anne,” he said earnestly, pleadingly, “should you but give yourself to me body and soul there should be no other in my heart I swear. I would cast off all others that are in competition with you, for there is none that ever have delighted me as you do.”
She stood up, trembling; she could see he would refuse to go on taking no for an answer, and she was afraid.
She said: “The Queen watches us, Your Majesty. I fear her anger.”
He arose, and they joined the dancers.
“Think not,” he said, “that this matter can rest here.”
“I crave Your Majesty’s indulgences. I see no way that it can end that will satisfy us both.”
“Tell me,” he said, “do you like me?”
“I hope I am a loving subject to Your Majesty...”
“I doubt not that you could be a very loving one, Anne, if you gave your mind to it; and I pray you will give your mind to it. For long have I loved you, and for long have I had little satisfaction in others for my thoughts of you.”
“I am unworthy of Your Majesty’s regard.”
She thought: Words! These tiresome words! I am frightened. Oh, Percy, why did you leave me! Thomas, if you loved me when you were a child, why did you let them marry you to a wife!
The King towered over her, massive and glittering in his power. He breathed heavily; his face was scarlet; desire in his eyes, desire in his mouth.
She thought: Tomorrow I shall return secretly to Hever.
The Queen was sulky. She dismissed her maids and went into that chamber wherein was the huge royal bed which she still shared with Henry, but the sharing of which was a mere formality. She lay at one extreme edge; he at the other.
She said: “It is useless to pretend you sleep.”
He said: “I had no intention of pretending, Madam.”
“It would seem to be your greatest pleasure to humiliate me.”
“How so?” he said.
“It is invariably someone; tonight it was the girl Boleyn. It was your kingly duty to have chosen me.”
“Chosen you, Madam!” he snorted. “That would I never have done; not now, nor years ago, an the choice were mine!”
She began to weep and to murmur prayers; she prayed for self-control for herself and for him. She prayed that he might soften towards her, and that she might defy the doctors who had prophesied that he would never get a male heir from her.
He lay listening to her but paying little attention, being much accustomed to her prayers, thinking of a girl’s slender body in scarlet and gold, a girl with flowing hair and a clever, pointed face, and the loveliest dark eyes in the court. Anne, he thought, you witch! I vow you hold off to provoke me....Pleasant thoughts. She was holding off to plague him. But enough, girl. How many years since I saw you in your father’s garden, and wanted you then! What do you want, girl? Ask for it; you shall have it, but love me, love me, for indeed I love you truly.
The Queen had stopped praying.
“They give themselves such airs, these women you elevate with your desires.”
“Come,” he said, gratified, for did not she give herself airs, and was it then because of his preference for her? “It is natural, is it not, that those noticed by the King should give themselves airs?”
“There are so many,” she said faintly.
Ah! he thought, there would be but one, Anne, and you that one!
The Queen repeated: “I would fain Your Majesty controlled himself.”
Oh, her incessant chatter wearied him. He wished to be left alone with his dream of her whose presence enchanted him.
He said cruelly: “Madam, you yourself are little inducement to a man to forsake his mistresses.”
She quivered; he felt that, though the width of the vast bed separated them.
“I am no longer young,” she said. “Am I to blame because our children died?” He was silent; she was trembling violently now. “I have heard the whispering that goes on in the court. I have heard of this they call The King’s Secret Matter.”
Now she had dragged his mind from the sensuous dream which soothed his body. So the whispering had reached her ears, had it! Well, assuredly it must reach them some time; but he would rather the matter had been put before her in a more dignified manner.
She said appealingly: “Henry, you do not deny it?”
He heaved his great body up in the bed. “Katharine,” he said, “you know well that for myself I would not
