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Dialogue with Six Queens. Part Three.

© Wendy J. Dunn

Anne Boleyn:

He never forgave me for not giving him his son, and for that he murdered me.

Jane Seymour:

You lie. The king said his marriage to you was the result of witch craft, and I believe full well it. How else could you have made the King marry you? And it give reasons for you birthing a deformed child* - how could the King turn a blind eye to that. All knows deformed children are a sign of powerful witchcraft.

Anne Boleyn: You take my poor, dead child as a sign of witchcraft? How little to you know, but then you were always one for crossing yourself whenever you sighted a black cat. That the King was taken with you! I could see through your whey-faced virgin act. It didn't stop me finding you perched on my husband's lap when I was big belly with his child. And as for my child being deformed... Verily, it was too early to tell... My uncle said, I lost my saviour, and that is all I know.

Jane Seymour:

Saviour! As if anything could have saved you! I saw the way you annoyed the King with your intellectual debates, and the way your black eyes sparkled when you got the better of him. Being maid to you was all the education I needed to know the wife the King truly desired. For an intelligent woman, you were foolish to think the King would keep forgiving you outshining him in front of his court. I always strived to keep my place as his wife. His word was final, and my command. You never knew how to submit to his will. Foolish, foolish Anne. You failed to even provide him with a living son. It I, Jane, who gave him his prince.

Anne Boleyn:

A son who was only to die too.

Jane Seymour:

Yes...yes my poor Edward died before his full years, but not until years after my lord King's death. He loved me more than you. I gave him peace, rather than the continually bickering you gave him as his wife. And I did what you could never do - I impressed the Spanish ambassador; he suggested the King give me the title of 'Pacific,' he could see I aimed to conserve peace. But then I pleased him by befriending and helping Mary, the daughter of good Queen Catherine. Chapuys' had taken her welfare very much to heart after Catherine's death. Poor Mary. You had put her through so much grief.