HEADACHE
I do not own the history of England. Please comment nicely!
All the loud talking gives her a headache. Anne feels the pain start off as a throbbing located just behind her eyes. And then her father begins to shake her and shout at her.
"What have you done?" Thomas Boleyn is frightened, his eyes wild. "Why has he gone off and left you? Do you understand what will happen to us if he doesn't come back?"
"He will come back. He will come back, damn it!" Anne closes her eyes, delicately massaging her temples with the tips of two fingers. The dull throbbing is not going away, but with all her will and all of her strength she calls up an image in her mind of the king, her husband. There he is, riding deep in the forest. They have quarreled, and he left her in a bitter and angry mood. Now, she silently sends him a signal, controlling his unsuspecting thoughts with her mind. She has done this before. She can make him turn back!
"There's another woman, isn't there. Damn you, why can't you hold his interest?" Anne's father feels no sympathy for his daughter's aching heart, or for her pounding head. He continues to snarl threats and abuse until Anne opens her striking green eyes and looks at him like a stranger.
"I have sent the king a message. He will be coming home soon. You will see. Now please leave me, all of you. I need to be ready when the king comes home."
All of them leave her at once. Father, sister, brother, servants and all the rest of the Boleyn organization. They leave with fear in their eyes, and much whispering. And then Anne lies down alone, face down on the enormous bed.
The effort of summoning the king is not what exhausts her. It is the strain of having to show strength in public when everyone else has lost hope. Anne must always be the fearless one, the clever one. She can never be afraid, she can never lose hope. All of that is exhausting, even more so when she is secretly on the edge of despair.
Anne fears that her hold on the king is weakening. Her head is no longer throbbing. Instead there is a crushing pain that makes her whimper and bury her face in the pillow. But there is no way to block the visions. She sees the man she loves in the arms of another woman, of many other women. Harry is surrounded by a sea of eager beauties, all bare breasts and merry laughing eyes. He ruts with them all, laughing, never tiring, spurting in fountains, spending his royal seed with prodigious energy. But there is always another and another and another, till the tormented queen screams a choked and stifled scream into her pillow.
There is a way to stop this. The horrible thought worms its way into her head like a new pain. Anne can stop all this. She can kill the king. She pictures a wrong turn in the forest, a rotten log over a black pool of putrid mud and slime. Her king being sucked into the blackness, choking, sinking down, deeper and deeper and deeper . . .
Harry is annoyed and in no mood for arguments when he comes home from the hunt. The usual crowd of hangers on from his wife's useless family is bowing before him, making excuses, begging him to be patient. But he elbows past them and goes straight to his wife's chambers. Anne is asleep, and he can clearly picture in his mind the look on her face when he tells her that it's over. He has all the power here.
"Wake up," he snarls, shaking her.
"Harry?" For just a second, Anne looks at him with wonder in her eyes. Then she frowns, her angry mask back in place. "You could have let me sleep," she grumbles. "You've been out riding all afternoon, while I've been stuck indoors with the most horrible headache!"
"I know how to cure a headache," Harry growls. The words come out of his mouth, but he can't understand why when he meant to get rid of her. He's tired of Anne, yet already he's undressing, already she's wrapping her arms around him. In the wink of an eye the two of them are making up their quarrel in a frenzied bout of lovemaking on the bed. Anne scratches his back and screams in triumph when he spurts his seed inside her, his own shout one of baffled surrender.
Afterwards he lies on his back, watching her comb out her long brown hair by the window. "Headache all better?" he asks, feeling almost too relaxed and satisfied.
"All better," she says, pursing her lips and kissing the air.
"My horse nearly fell into a bog this afternoon," Harry murmurs, his eyes heavy. "Would've drowned for sure."
"Yes, you would have, Harry darling. But I spared you . . . this time."
Harry hears the words, or at least he thinks he does. But he's tired, too tired to argue or quarrel or wonder what hold the woman has over him. And from the other side of the chamber, Anne watches as the king falls into a deep sleep.