Free Dear Heart, How Like You This by Wendy J. Dunn

myself.”
    And with those words she turned herself away from me and went back to eating. I stared at her—stunned. Obviously she was not pleased with the forthcoming wedding either. But who was she to speak to me like that? Especially since I felt exactly the same way, but at least I had made some effort to forget my own pain, and make some attempt at friendliness.
    *
    Thus, two days after my arrival from Cambridge, I married Elizabeth. In many, many ways she was just a child then. But I, at seventeen, was also a child. My dreams of Anne had kept me innocent, imprisoned me in a time long gone. Marriage to Elizabeth savagely tore me from all my dreams—made me deal with a flesh and blood female where for so long I had dealt with only the memory and the conjuring of my dream. I was as much a virgin on my wedding night as my girl bride. I suppose on reflection that may have been the beginning of all our troubles. I knew what I was supposed to do, but was clumsy in the doing of it. Elizabeth was still a whole month away from her fourteenth birthday. I know the experience scared and hurt her. But I, too, was scared and hurt. I know also that I took a lot of anger to our wedding bed. Anger at the world and my life that seemed to treat with me so ill. Anger that made me survive the day and able to perform the man’s part for the first time that terrible, loveless night. It was not the best way to begin a marriage.

CONTENTS
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Chapter 2
     
     
    “They flee from me that sometime did me seek.”
     
    In 1522, France and England were once again at loggerheads with one another, with the grim result of war being declared yet again. It also had another result: Anne’s father felt it best she return from France before the crisis worsened. For a short time after her return, Anne—now fifteen—stayed at Hever Castle, but only long enough for Uncle Boleyn to arrange a post for her as a maid to the Dowager Queen of France, now the Duke of Suffolk’s wife.
    Despite a short note from George, written from his studies at Oxford telling me Anne had safely arrived home, I did not realise she had arrived at court until a day I walked down the corridors of Greenwich Palace. At once, I espied a very thin girl walking with a long-legged stride amongst a group of older ladies. As we passed, the girl lifted her face and we both stopped still, staring at one another with astonishment. Indeed, to me it seemed as if time froze in its tracks, only beginning its march again with her cry of “Tom!” followed by my cry of “Anna!” Without further words, we ran into each other’s arms. I swung her up and around, kissing her joyously, to the obvious great disapproval and dismay of Anne’s companions.
    How wonderful to have my girl in my arms again! The last time we had seen one another was when we had done our farewells as children at Dover. Now we were no longer children, but two young adults trying to stake out our own claims and lives within the seesaw world making up the English court.
    But even these innocent moments of such utter happiness can be threatened and marred by that which surrounds this world. We both became aware of Anne’s companions, continuing to watch us in shocked and disapproving silence.
    “’Tis my cousin Tom,” she said to them, in way of explanation after we released one another from our public embrace. Still the women gazed at us with grim and hard faces. We looked at one another, and knew, without saying, the uselessness of trying to make any further explanations. Anne’s eyes illuminated with quick decision, and she curtsied in their general direction.
    “Please excuse us, but my cousin and I have seven long years to catch up on.”
    With those words she grabbed my hand, and fled with me to the gardens just outside the palace’s doors. Once out of sight of the palace, and hidden from view by a tall and long hedge, Anna flung herself on the grass, pulling me abruptly alongside.
    I laughed. I could not help but