Read Dear Heart, How Like You This for Free Online Page B

in court, defying death and all by reading out loud a document claiming that Anne spoke and jested to his wife about the grave matter of the King’s impotence? Thus, showing to England how the King’s bruised pride could lead one straight to the executioner’s block.
    I believe his action was calculated to be suicidal. George had no desire to live in a world where his beloved sister had been murdered. Yea—murdered with such vicious and bloody intent.
    No! No! No!
    Why am I remembering this?
    I want to stay in a time where all was still golden with the promise of the future. When all seemed good and nothing evil. I want to remember a time when pain was easily kissed aside. Yea, when pain was simply kissed aside.
    *
    If Uncle Boleyn considered five the age to begin our education, it was also the age he considered us old enough to receive our first riding lessons. Thus, we all acquired our own ponies. Mine was a grey gelding with black markings on its legs that seemed to have never forgiven the fates for rendering him less of a horse than he should have been. Toby was a challenge to ride, but ultimately loyal when the going became rough.
    Anne’s first horse was a chestnut mare with a white star upon its forehead, which led Anne to naming it Astra. Anna never so much reminded me of a wild gypsy as when she was astride her mare. Her long hair would always be loose and flowing, with the hint of silver earrings gleaming through her blue-black tresses. And was she clothed in feminine attire? Oh no! Not my girl, not my Anna! She always wore one of her brother’s outgrown hose and tunic that she had hunted out in the clothes chest kept for our cast-offs in Simonette’s room.
    On our rides together we always had a loyal and faithful guardian, since forever in grave pursuit of Anna and her horse was the Boleyn’s huge Irish wolfhound, a dog that answered to the name of Pluto. It may have originally been Uncle Boleyn’s hunting dog—given to him by his kinsman, the Irish Earl of Ormond—but the dog had long ago decided the little girl—who took her first riding lessons on its back—was its true mistress.
    But Anna always had a strong affinity with animals, especially those of a canine persuasion. All throughout her life she possessed one dog or another, all of which followed her around devotedly.
    And she was not just close to animals. Anne also possessed a deep awareness of the natural world around her.
    One time, just before she departed from my everyday life for that first and dreadful time, we spent the afternoon together when suddenly there was a burst of incessant rain, even though the sun still brightly shone in a sky with only a scattering of dark clouds. Getting off our horses, we led them quickly to shelter underneath some nearby trees.
    “Oh look, Tom!” Anne said, pointing upwards to the sky. “Look over there at that beautiful rainbow.”
    My gaze followed to where she pointed. I saw a magnificent arch of violet, red, yellow, and blue in the sky. Indeed, the whole scene around us was just full of the beauties of nature. The shower that had forced us to find shelter seemed to create before our eyes a veil of crystal droplets—droplets embraced by dancing rays of sunlight as they shone through the leaves of the trees.
    It made me feel as if there was nothing better to do than to join this magical dance of rain and sun. This feeling, I know, was also transmitted to Anna, who stood by my side.
    She turned, beaming at me, and said, “The world is such a beautiful place, Tommy. I just so love everything about it. How the sun rises and how the sun sets. The full silver moon on a summer’s night, and a winter’s sky after a heavy snowfall. How the larks sing in the spring to welcome the new morn. The way the wind smells after rain falls on a hot day.
    “Blue skies… cloudy skies. Look over there where the sky is blue. Can you see those clouds, Tom? Do you not think they look like cloudy steps leading into the