At the Mercy of the Queen: A Novel of Anne Boleyn by Anne Clinard Barnhill

she could.
    “Madame, I do not need you to tell me about the sacraments! Nor do I need you to point where I should go and with whom! You would do best to shut your eyes to what I do, as your betters have done. Do not forget that it was I who raised you up and it is I who can cast you down again!” shouted the king, his words hard and cold.
    “Cast me down as you wish, my lord. And cast your son down with me!” said the queen, her voice loud and high-pitched, sounding nothing like her usual low tones. Such noise hurt Madge’s ears, the caterwauling of the queen set against the king’s blustering shouts. Madge closed her eyes, trying to make herself disappear completely. Obviously, both the king and the queen had forgotten she was there. Or perhaps they didn’t care. She was so far beneath them, she scarcely could have mattered.
    At the queen’s words, the king softened as if he suddenly realized any suffering on the part of the queen might affect his little son, the one for whom he had moved heaven and earth. Tenderness for both Anne and the prince flooded into his heart. Such changes were not unusual for this man, Madge observed. One minute, he could be full of laughter and joking; the next, his face would become cloudy and his voice thunderous. Getting along with such a man was akin to walking on eggs from the poultry yard, trying not to break a single one.
    “Now sweetheart, let us not quarrel. You know you have my heart—you’ve the proof right there in your belly—big and round as it is,” said the king, tenderly caressing the queen’s stomach, his hands fitting all the way around the circumference. The queen’s face seemed frozen, her mouth turned down and her eyes looking off into the distance. Madge watched as the king fell to his knees and kissed the queen’s belly, cooing to the prince as he did so. The queen sighed, seeming to release her anger. A rueful smile played across her mouth. She stroked the king’s hair almost absentmindedly.
    “I have no wish to quarrel, my lord. I wish only to be loved by you as once I was,” said the queen, her shrill voice now quiet as a whisper.
    “You shall always be my queen, my beloved,” said the king. Madge noticed he did not say he loved her as before. She wondered if the queen also noted this omission. The king rose and embraced his wife, patting her back and holding her in his large arms, much the way a bear might hug its mate. Or its prey, thought Madge.
    “Sweet, I must off to bed now. The lists have tired me this day and there is much work of state to be done on the morrow. Kiss us now, there’s a good lass,” said the king as he pressed his smallish mouth against the queen’s full lips. He did not linger but turned and headed for the door. He then glanced once more at the queen and blew her another kiss. “Rest well, my love,” he said.
    “And you, my lord,” said Her Majesty, that faraway look still in her eye. Madge kept as still as she could; she barely breathed.
    “You may come out now, cousin. You have weathered the worst,” said the queen, collapsing on her mattress.
    “Majesty, how do you bear it? How can you make do with such a man?” Madge asked as she pulled the queen into a sitting position and began rubbing her narrow shoulders and thin back. Madge could feel the small bones moving beneath her hands and marveled again at how tiny the queen was, almost frail. She seemed too small to survive the ordeal of birth, Madge thought. And such a thought terrified her.
    “We bear what we must, Margaret. I made this bargain with the devil. I went into the whole affair with my eyes open wide. I knew what he did to my sister—tiring of her once he’d been invited into her bed. Marrying her off to William Carey, a mere nobody. Of course, once the sweating sickness claimed Carey, poor Mary has had to beg her bread. God knows, my father, the great Lord Wiltshire, refuses to help her. And her boy, Henry? What is he but another Fitzroy? Another