Notes: I used a few references for this. The Jewish Virtual Library version of Esther (supplemented by the original text in translation), Simon Schama's history of the Jewish people & The Jews of Iran (by Houman M. Sarshar). There was a Jewish Community (though not openly but they were there) in Elizabethan London - I've moved the foundation back a bit and made some things up but there was a community. Henna painting is a Persian-Jewish tradition. The shabbat song that plays in my head when Anne prays comes from a specific Persian Jewish Shabbat Song. (cross posted on AO3)
Her father calls her Amara Anne in private. Ami, her mother calls her. But they both call her Esther ("Esther who is very beautiful and very kind and very wise and very brave").
Mary is Miriam, George has always been their Farzin and Anne grows up with three halves of herself - Anne, Amara and Esther.
But that is what it is to be of their people in this place. Annes' mother is the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk through his second wife - a Syrian lady who kept to her faith despite the prohibitions and the careful fiction that the Lady Elizabeth Tilney was merely of an obscure (but wealthy and titled) family.
(It is true that she is of a wealthy and noble family but it is not one of Europe, let alone of England. The Duke of Norfolk had been at least somewhat careful when his eyes alighted on a young and pretty prospect for a second wife).
Her father is the son of two Persian Jews who had found something of a safe haven in London and who had been elevated to the nobility (if the minor nobility) by dint of their skills as diplomats and courtiers.
And so Anne has three selves. Three stories. Anne Boleyn, English Lady with an interest in the reformed religion, Amara who learns the Hebrew and Persian tongue and keeps the Sabbath with joy and Esther who wishes she did not hide herself.
But then Anne has found it hard to hide. She is dark haired, dark eyed and olive skinned - taking after her father rather than her mother. Mary has her mothers inheritance from their English grandfather - golden haired, fair skinned and blue eyed. George looks like Anne, though it is less noticeable in him, the signs of being what the English see as other. So Anne has grown up knowing she is different and stands out and yet she does not because in the end no one knows outside of the small hidden community.
And so Anne paints her hands with henna and and sews bridal silks her grandmother had bought from Persia and learns to hide that she does not eat pork and her skin goes darker in the sun than was proper and correct. She has been learning to hide ever since she was a small child but there is joy in it as well, somehow.
She goes to the French Court hiding her story so well it almost becomes unreal - the little girl Amara who danced in silks and painted henna onto her hands and arms, who made the challah and drank hot mint tea and teased her older siblings in languages she is not supposed to know. Here she is Anne Boleyn - the bright over young child who becomes a favourite of Marguerite of Navarre and later Queen Claude and who debates theology and learns new dances, new music, new languages and stories. She loves to learn. In the end though, she finds herself saying her Jewish prayers in her head while sitting in a Christian church and biting her tongue when there is any debate or mention of the Jewish people.
("You are talking of me, of my family" she wants to say to the courtiers when they sneer or repeat the stories about the Jewish monsters who steal babies to make matzoh and mix the blood in with their gold and have poisoned all the wells in France. But it would do no good at all). And she should be used to hearing this - as it has been around her all her life and it would not change - to be Jewish was to be safe nowhere.
But England feels safer at least. Anne returns to her home and to her family and what she hopes will be a quiet life. She wants to raise her children and love her husband (whoever he may be) and be surrounded by her family in safety and to not have to worry about hiding herself away.
And then the King of England shakes the world.
It begins with a is a feast to celebrate the betrothal of the Princess Mary to the Dauphin of France - it had been finalised and Mary will soon be going to France so she may become accustomed to the country that she will one day rule. But it is also a way in which King Henry will further punish her mother - for not having a son, for objecting to his ennobling Henry Fitzroy and for pushing a Spanish match that failed. So he seeks to further make her position (& his lack of affection) clear.
So Queen Katherine refuses to attend the betrothal feast when she is summoned. It was simply the final straw - to pretend to be pleased her daughter was leaving to be married to a Valois, to smile as Henry danced with his mistress and to know she no longer had any power at all - that it had been taken by Wolsey who had engineered this betrothal and that Henry had not just refused to listen to her (he has done that enough, of late) he has deliberately humiliated her. He has kept her from her daughter.
So she refuses to attend, hoping perhaps she can shame Henry into understanding how he has hurt her. She has nothing else left - her nephew is still a prisoner of the French King having failed in his war against France and the Pope? She has heard it will be Wolsey next now. So she must do this.
King Henry has never been angrier when his wife refuses to attend the banquet, once again defying him and in such a brazen fashion. He forgets that she has been so dignified for so many years, he forgets the love they shared and sees only his humiliation and the anger that people will whisper he cannot control his own wife.
So King Henry determines to send his Queen away and to marry again. Not to a foreign princess no - no more foreign influences. He wishes for an English Lady, one who will give him an English heir. With Wolsey recently appointed the papal representative in England it is easy enough for him to grant the divorce - Mary remains a Princess through a loophole and is sent to France and Queen Katherine is banished to a nunnery, though a luxurious one. And the King begins his search for a wife.
The Lady Anne is not even in consideration. Nor does she wish to be. But her uncle the Duke of Norfolk sends her to court (her older sister Mary is married now) simply to support the favoured Howard candidates. Anne dresses as simply as possible without standing out as too sparsely dressed and aims to hide in the group of ladies.
She does for the most part. But it is hard not to be drawn into the court so she finds herself in the quiet of an intellectual circle - not at the centre of the court by any means (Anne will leave that to the maidens with the proper heritage, without a secret like hers to hide) but it is not frozen out of court doings. She helps the Howard ladies with their hair, their dress and their jewels and keeps to the background much as she longs to dance and laugh and take a central role in the masques.
But somehow, somehow the king still notices her. She thinks at first that he is going to make her his mistress and this, this she will not do and so she sends the jewels he gifts her back as tactfully as she can (they are jewelled crosses and Anne fingers the pendant that is the quiet symbol of her faith from her mother and feels sick looking at these crosses, at the symbol of the faith that has sent her family and her people into hiding for fear of blood and burning). It only makes the King want her more, this dark haired maiden with the deep eyes and a face you cannot help but follow no matter how she hides in the background.
As Henry talks to her he finds her kind, wise and brilliant - educated better than many princesses and while not of high nobility or royal descent the lady Anne carries herself like she was born to be Queen. Born to be his Queen. And he will marry her - there is no obstacle, no impediment.
Anne says yes as she must and prays, oh she prays. She says shabbat and she finds herself praying that she will have the wisdom to hide her faith and the courage to keep to it. She looks at Thomas More and is terrified (she knows what he thinks simply of heretics, let alone of Jews) and at the Cardinal who must resent her rise and oh, oh she prays for the courage to hold to her faith. To hold to herself.
Cardinal Wolsey is thought to be lax on heresy (he does not burn heretics) but he is still an ardent Catholic and he still does not have favourable thoughts towards the Jewish people. Anne knows that if he ever found out her true faith he would destroy her in a heartbeat - reformist tendencies can be forgiven, being a Jew cannot be. And he resents her for rise and for her family's rise.
But then Wolsey had essentially run the country for a long time - he did not wish his influence to be usurped by anyone, let alone the kings new wife. Queen Anne to be (now her Grace the Duchess of Pembroke) may have favoured French interests due to her time in the French court but Wolsey knows her family are said to favour the reformed faith and the Lady Anne does not strike him as a woman who will not interfere in political matters.
The Cardinal is proved right when Anne speaks to the King about the former Queen - she asks that Katherine be housed in more comfort, that she is allowed to come to court if she wishes and that the lady is given more servants (Anne might in her heart fear the former Queen - she has heard tales of the inquisition, of the long weary path into exile of friends among the small community she grew up in London but there is no reason there to not be kind. Perhaps it might even help, one day).
And most of all that Katherine is allowed to see her daughter. Princess Mary's intended husband had recently died so she had returned to England, the marriage being unconsummated. Anne has built a friendship with the young girl and can see how much Mary longs for her mother and so she asks if Mary cannot after all see her mother.
The king says yes, distractedly. And the courtiers whisper about the influence that the lady has on the king and the Cardinal worries (what might this girl do?). Sir Thomas does not worry, not yet (though he has heard disturbing things about the heretic leanings of the lady she has not as yet shown them).
In the spring the Lady Anne Boleyn weds King Henry and becomes Queen Anne. She is dressed all in white and underneath her dress she wears the pendant from her mother and feels she is not really married at all after this Christian service. She reminds herself that she must think it real, at least in part. At least on the surface.
(what she wants is henna, a rabbi, the ketubah and the laughter and joy of her family).
