Dear Heart, How Like You This by Wendy J. Dunn Page B

barely concealed lust.
    Yea, I freely admit, my plan was rather mad, and probably ill thought out. But God help me! I could not sit by and do nothing.
    Anna, who could remember well our childhood acting, gave away with an amused glint in her eyes that she saw through my act. I think she assumed that I was trying to help her by increasing the King’s ardour through the rivalry of competition. To my eyes, Anne became more beautiful every day. It was an absolute torment and agony to pretend something that was not pretence.
    Anne was at this time a Lady in Waiting to Catherine of Aragon. I thought the Queen a very gracious lady, for whom I once was given the pleasure and honour of composing poems. And I, despite all the conflicts the future would bring, always thought most highly of the Queen, believing with all my heart that this saintly woman was great and noble. She did not deserve the terrible, most cruel future the fates held in store for her.
    And what was the King, her husband, like? King Henry was now a man of thirty-five, a man very much in the midst of his prime. He was also a man who had, many years before, fallen out of love with his older wife, a woman rapidly aged by frequent child-bearing and the deep grief of losing all her children, bar one—the nine-year old Princess Mary.
    Yea, I will admit the truth. Our King at thirty-five was a man nobly made. Indeed, Henry of England was a man among men. Taller by far than most men of his court, he was a man exceedingly vain about his presence, and with every reason to be. Red golden hair, bright blue eyes, athletic body, and skin so fair and clear that it was the envy of many a woman. England took great pride in its manly and seemingly courageous King. Almost as much as the King took pride in the image he himself presented to his Kingdom.
    Sometimes I cannot help but thinking that the King’s greatest love affair was with himself. In sooth, so much so that it affected his prowess in the bedchamber. It must be hard to make love to a woman when you are so used to making love to yourself.
    His courtship of Anne was very different to his usual, easy conquests, simply because she rebuffed him. And Anne’s utter indifference to his kingly desires would have, I believe, shocked our poor King right down to his toenails. Never before had a subject—and a woman at that—rebuffed him. Anne was clever enough to realise that her apparent rejection of his advances was like putting a red flag to a bull, and she soon had this particular royal bull charging at that flag.
    And it was not only the King who could not get enough of her company. Since Anne’s return from Hever she had fast become a major influence at court. Many of the ladies at court were trying desperately to follow her lead in everything. Indeed, in so many different directions that George and I could not help sharing our amusement with one another. Certainly, Anne only had to alter her dresses slightly for this alteration to become the latest fashion—very quickly copied by all the women at the court. Even Anna’s favourite colours were seen everywhere.
    However, I also could not help thinking that many of these mature, court ladies made utter fools of themselves when they attempted to copy Anne’s lovely, fluid manner of dance. To watch her dance was to watch something truly unique and marvellous. But then dancing, from the time she was a little child, was always one of Anne’s greatest gifts, and I felt it could never be copied to the soaring level she was able to achieve, and with such apparent, effortless grace.
    Standing alongside George, I felt embarrassed for these older ladies when I watched them try to match and outdo Anne’s movements upon the dance floor.
    I turned and whispered to George.
    “Can one expect a duck to be as graceful in the water as a swan? Nay, I say, and more: Anne has more grace in one fingertip than those women have in their entire bodies.”
    George’s eyes shone his amusement and