They sat playing a quiet game of cards in an ornate, yet slightly dreary, chamber. Neither women spoke and the silence only added to the glum surroundings. One sister glanced up to the other over her hand of cards.

"Tell me your thoughts, my dear sister Elisabeth. Your face betrays a sorrow or sadness that I do not understand." She said as she lowered her eyes back to her cards.

Without looking up the sister said, "I think of my mother. I fear I am forgetting her, Mary." Elisabeth looked up at her sister with pleading eyes riddled with sorrow. "Won't you tell me something you remember of her that my memory may see her face clearly again?"

Mary kept her eyes on her cards with her head down so that Elisabeth couldn't see her grimace at the thought of Anne Boleyn. "Do you really want to know?"

Elisabeth placed her cards on the table and replied, "Please, sister, hide nothing."

Mary sighed and kept her eyes down. "All that I will say is that she deserved to die." Mary looked at her sister whose eyes grew large at hearing the blunt statement. She continued, "She was a witch and a whore. Because of her, my mother and I were shunned and disgraced by the king. I hate her, sister."

Elisabeth's eyes were rimmed with tears but held them back. She could never bear to cry in front of her strong and stern sister. In a choked voice she asked, "Do you hate her even now? Two decades after her death, is the burning hatred still hot?"

Mary looked back down to her cards and replied, "Yes. Even now I curse her in her grave for what she has done to my family. She tore apart all that I knew and for that she will never be forgiven."

There was a silence as Elisabeth looked down at her hands in her lap and Mary gazed at her cards. Then Elisabeth spoke up.

"Do you hate me also, dearest sister?"

Mary put down her cards, looked at Elisabeth with pained eyes and said, "Sometimes…" she paused," sometimes you remind me of her." Another pause. "Then I fear you."

Mary got up from the table and left the room, leaving Elisabeth with a stunned expression on her face.