DISCLAIMER: I am a poor student who would have to pay you in tins of baked beans if you decided to sue me. Showtime should know that I'll put the pretty actors back when I've finished playing with them, and any semblance of real history belongs to itself.
Takes place towards the end of Season 2, beginning somewhere in-between Katherine of Aragon's death and Anne's 'edge of a golden world'. I try to stick as close to in-show canon as possible, but a few digressions and alterations have been necessary for my own wicked purposes.
Trick of the Light
1.
"Wait." Her voice is imperious, a command, just as she meant it to be.
He hesitates, already half-inclined into a departing bow, and she sees the guarded look of trepidation as he stills, straightening slowly, his gaze returning to her own. She has a brief impression of his uncertainty, and allows herself to smile at this power, this fear that she wields carelessly now, gifted to her beneath the weight of a crown and the illusion of a promise. That much Henry has given her, if nothing else, and she grasps it still, her fragile right, fierce in her possessiveness for the very fact of its fragility.
"Madam?" His voice is politely enquiring, impeccably neutral, but she knows his tricks by now, this master of diversion and deception, nimble on his feet, side-stepping, eluding, elegantly cunning, turning conversations back on themselves with a quirked eyebrow or a half-smile. She knows the impersonal tone is part of the façade, poised deliberately to unhand her, deflect the knife-point of her enquiry. Behind the calm darkness of his eyes, the viper is poised.
Anne snaps the prayer-book shut as she turns towards him again, hoping he might flinch. But Cromwell is standing with his hands clasped behind him and one shoulder dipped forward slightly, the edges of his mouth down-turned and a tiny frown puckering the skin between his dark brows, an attitude of pained, polite sufferance as he endures her caprices, the whims of the whore-queen. She feels an inexplicable rise of irritation as she looks at him now; how she hates that expression of prim, staunched impassivity, that almost contemptuously tolerant silence of his that bears down between them. She would, she realises, feeling only a small murmur of surprise, very much like to strike him, shatter that duplicitous mask he cultivates and replace it with naked alarm.
Give me a reason, she thinks.
"I was wondering if you knew of the King's plans for Edgewood Abbey." She makes her voice deliberately casual, knowing he will easily discern the threat.
He has the audacity to smile slightly, almost a moue of dismissal, and Anne feels her own mouth tighten in cold fury. The wretched man doesn't know how close he is to the back of her hand.
"I know that His Majesty plans to put it to better uses than it was wont. It was previously the site of the most appalling licentiousness and debauchery, God pardon, but now that it is out of the hands of the monks, it might finally be of service to a deserving cause."
Anne smirks away a sting of irritation at the ease of his dissemblance, the attempt to mislead. His tone is grave and faintly lecturing, and as he speaks he has crossed the room in a contemplative arc, both widening the space between them and forcing her to turn her head slightly to keep him in her sight. He is now beyond the range of her hand, and it makes her want to cuff him all the more.
"His Majesty plans to sell it to Sir Francis Wareham - for a considerable sum, I hear." She is still only mildly caustic, but she wants him to know that she has him in check.
A flicker of a grimace passes across his brow, as though her obtuseness is almost too much to bear.
"Madam, it is prudent…indeed, essential, that such buildings are disposed of in a manner that proves profitable to the realm. Besides - " He gestures lightly, a careless half-shrug - "I believe His Majesty trusts to the discretion of Sir Francis."
"I should think you do believe that, Mr Cromwell, considering it was your idea."
His lips part as he absorbs the explicit nature of the riposte, shoulders moving in the slow deliberation of an inward breath. His long silence is familiar to her, habitual in him, borne out of wilful arrogance, perhaps, or allowing time for the swift contrivances of his mind as he unwinds the particulars of his opponent's argument and re-sews them in graceful knots, tripping the unwary with the unforeseen double-edge of their own words. She will not allow for it this time; she has out-foxed greater than this blacksmith's boy.
"Do you presume to deny it?" she demands, flinging the prayer-book down onto her bureau as she takes a step towards him, closing the gap he has created between them with each word. "Is it really your intention to attempt to mislead your betters, so brazenly, so utterly without shame?"
She is inches from him now, close enough for her breath to mingle with his, but he doesn't try to evade her, instead bearing the onslaught with an expression of resigned martyrdom, blinking a little as her enunciation sharpens.
"It was never my intention, madam - " he begins, but she cuts across him triumphantly, seizing on the inflection.
"But you do not deny that you have misled the King?"
At last she knows she has touched him. He meets her eyes in barely disguised shock. His pupils are inky with dilation, and she discerns the flat mirror of her own reflection swimming on their surfaces.
"I pray you pardon my boldness, Majesty, but you are quite mistaken." She notes the duplicitous change in address, the sly appeal to her vanity. Unwittingly, she finds herself rising to it, lifting her chin with a half-toss of her head, her mouth pinching with furious, luxuriating pride.
"You may think that I am too bound by the limits of my duty to hold any sway over His Majesty's will," she says, and as she speaks his closes his eyes, an almost apologetic grimace cinching the delicate skin at their edges. Why does he not look at her? Can she not expect him to answer to that much, at least? "But I assure you, Mr Cromwell," (a day will come when she will have held that vile name in her mouth for the last time) "that I see the false face of your deceit. Perhaps the King is not so wise as he would have us believe, to be influenced by a counsel so plainly wicked."
She feels a wild thrill as she utters the accusation, scything across her anger and leaving her skin prickling in breathless triumph in its wake. Her hand twitches at her side, reflexively, as the temptation once again ebbs into her mind. She wants to hurt him…and more, she wants him to fear her, to glorify her in dread, to mortify himself for the sake of her… Is that not the prerogative of a queen, after all?
Her gaze is level with his mouth, and she is distracted by the sensitive curve of his upper lip; she is deliberate in her overt consideration of it, mentally taking possession of him, her subject, claiming him in the long indulgence of her gaze. The soft bow of his upper lip creates a thoughtful pressure against his lower, drawing the habitual creases at the edges of his mouth into an almost melancholy down-turn. It is a proud mouth, at times nervously flexible, and it somehow betrays him more than his eyes, which would be all but unfathomable if it were not for the delicate lines fanning from their corners that puzzle Anne with their testament to a smile she has rarely seen. This close, she can detect the work of an errant razorblade, a small nick along the definition of his jaw line that has bled well as small cuts tend to do, has been blotted away but bled anew, rose smudged against the grain of his fastidiously clean shave. It strikes her as a peculiar chink in his defences, almost as though she has never considered his ability to bleed, and the realisation marks her. It is a small, inexplicable victory.
The Chancellor's nostrils flare in a barely audible inhalation, and Anne realises that he has been holding his breath.
When he finally speaks, his voice is roughened, halting as he attempts to regain himself: "I regret that I have seemingly forfeited Your Majesty's trust..."
"No." She shakes her head, just slightly, and his eyes move to her face in silent questioning. "Nothing is forfeit that never existed in the first place, Mr Cromwell." It is as warm as any assurance might be.
He makes a small, startled movement when she raises her hand, but her fingers brace gently against the angle of his jaw, turning his face to the side as her lids lower speculatively. Her thumb finds the blade-cut and traces over it, feeling the small scratch where the blood has dried against the soft pad of her thumb-tip. He is standing perfectly still, submitting to the cool familiarity of her perusal of him as though transfixed by it, but he watches her face cautiously, prey beneath the eyes of a cat.
"You ought to be more careful," she says softly, a deliberate echo of her own words from another time.
She will hunt out this cuckoo in her nest.
Next time: 'If it was still within her grasp to see it to fruition it would not be only Cromwell's head on a spike that she would order; no, she fancies a veritable flock of harvested crowns roosting along the battlements of Tower Bridge.'