“Yes,” Will said. “Because, Meg Wyatt, in my heart, in every other way, and near in word itself, I have been promised and pledged to you forever.”

“Was he angry?”

Will nodded. “He sent me from him for a time, here. I have not yet been recalled.”

“Will your father then approve of our marriage?”

“I care not,” he said. “In spite of your misguided judgments I do not always heed his hark.”

I blushed deeply at the memory of that accusation and he laughed aloud and kissed my hand.

In order to regain my dignity I said, “Well, you must care some because we can hardly wander from town to town and beg our bread.”

“Leave those details to me, mistress,” he said. “If my father will not see to keep me as his heir after we are married then we shall go to Antwerp and I will work with printers I know. Printing Scriptures and other works is what I am called to. I know it now. I can put my family’s fortune to good use, if I remain heir.”

“And will you so remain if you have me? I have no dowry.” I hung my head. “I know ’tis a shameful thing.”

He took my face in his hands. “I will gladly take your shame upon me when I let him know what we have done. And now, my lady, you have not yet answered me.”

I looked up at Will, for the first time in many years, feeling hope, and the love of my man, and the love of my God, all at once.

I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips. “Yes, Will Ogilvy, I shall be your wife.”

Oh blessed Lord Jesus. Thank You.

The next night Will invited a friend, a priest of Reform persuasion, as well as my brother Thomas, who had not yet returned to his wife, and two members of the nearby nobility to witness our vows. As I dressed in my gown, I took the portrait of my mother out of my chest and looked at it, tracing my finger over her face.

“I have not let you down, lady mother,” I said afore returning it to its wraps.

I took Anne’s prayer book in my hand and closed my eyes. “You will always be a part of me, my dearest friend. You wished this for me, I know. Be at peace.”

After the short service all took their leave. It was just Edithe and I in Will’s chamber.

“I have never had a more joyful occasion in serving you, lady.” She helped me into a loose, lovely white dressing gown. She brushed my long hair, which hung halfway down my back and around my shoulders.

“And I am ever thankful to have you here,” I said. She curtseyed politely, made sure the wafers and cheese and wine were set, and took her leave. Shortly thereafter Will came in. He stood looking at me, and I at him, for a full minute. The years of our lives, the many years I thought all was lost, and indeed it was, had been reclaimed and returned to us.

“You are beautiful, My Lady,” he said quietly. He drew me to him and then drew us both to the foot of the bed, where we sat side by side. He opened my palm and in it put a small silk bag which I recognized as having once been my own.

“I had this made long ago. Open it,” he urged me.

I undid the strings and poured the contents into my open hand. A hammered gold necklace, a daisy chain. “There is no gift that could mean more,” I said softly.

“May I?”

I nodded and he took the chain into his hand and then fastened it about my neck. When he was finished, he leaned in to kiss me once, twice more, the sweet and then urgent kisses I’d waited for all my life. The kisses of my husband.

“Te amo,” he whispered to me later as we lay together and watched the moon rise outside the window.

“Te amo,” I whispered back.

It was good to speak Latin again.

Five months hence, before the Christmas celebrations began, Will’s father recalled him. Will insisted that I accompany him. “Do not worry,” he said. “My father cannot abide Rose’s husband, and though he should like young Philip, he does not, and does not care to suffer him to be the heir to two fortunes. Including his own.” He squeezed my hand for comfort.

I was shown to my rooms, and later that night, after dinner, his father called me forward in his study. “Well, Mistress Wyatt,” he said. “We meet again.”

I held my tongue and did not correct my title. “Yes, sir. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“I understand that my son has married you, rather than the great heiress I had chosen for him. You have no remaining dowry and no fortune. Do you bring anything at all to this union, My Lady?”

I stood fast and said nothing, but smoothed my hands over the sides and front of my thin gown, chosen specially for this reason and worn without stays. As I did, his eyes were drawn to the growing swell of my stomach. His heir.

He said nothing at all but, for the first time ever, I saw the smallest of smiles twitch on Baron Asquith’s stern face. I allowed myself a small smile in return. We had come to an understanding.

What I had once so easily dismissed, a simple life as a wife and a mother, had now become my greatest pleasure. I mourned Anne, who had not had the mighty love of a good man, but rather the uncertain affections of a mighty man.

She will never be forgotten, for certes.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I stood in front of Anne Boleyn on Easter Sunday, or I should say, I stood in front of her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Because I wanted to reflect on her life but not inhibit others from viewing the painting, I stood a few feet back and let others pass in front of me. Two women of a certain age did just that.

“Floozy!” one sputtered.

“Schemer!” her friend hissed as she moved quickly past Anne, who stared, calmly, back.

I felt as though someone had just spat on a friend.

Throughout the ages Anne has been portrayed as a man-eater, the woman who used her feminine wiles to woo Henry away from his faithful, aging wife. And while it’s true that Henry sought to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, the woman, and her story, is much deeper, purer, and more complicated than that. Historian Dr. Eric Ives, perhaps the world’s most respected biographer of Anne Boleyn, says, “Historians see through a glass darkly; they know in part and they pronounce in part.” Maybe there has been more pronouncing than knowing where Anne has been concerned.

While this is a work of historical fiction, I’ve sought to remain as true to the history as to the fiction. Ives says that Anne “would remain a remarkable woman in a century that produced many of great note. There were few others who rose from such beginnings to a crown and none contributed to a revolution as far reaching as the English Reformation.”

Anne really was lifelong friends with the sisters of Thomas Wyatt, and they are believed to have accompanied her to the scaffold. The son of the eldest Wyatt sister did have a son named John Rogers who became a priest, and then a Reformer, and was commonly believed to be the first Protestant martyred under Bloody Mary, Henry’s eldest daughter. In my story and genealogy chart, I have switched the names of Meg and her mother and Henry Wyatt’s eldest daughter and her mother for this story so that two “Annes” wouldn’t confuse the reader. Many believe Margaret, Lady Lee, to have been the Margaret in my story, but the birth dates of Henry Wyatt’s children, as well as his first marriage and the birth date of Lady Lee, suggested something else to me, as seen on my genealogy charts and in the story within. Many of the things said and done in the book are actual recorded history, and some, like making Henry and Katherine Carey the illegitimate offspring of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn, are theories I have adopted based on what I feel is good history. This is true, too, of the private commitment of Anne and Henry in November 1532, espousals de praesenti, formalized by intercourse, which, according to Eric Ives in his biography The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn is a plausible alternative scenario put forth not only by Anne’s and Elizabeth’s supporters but also by those who had no personal stake, and even by soem who had potential motivation to undermine.