Read The Kiss of the Concubine: A story of Anne Boleyn for Free Online Page A

winsome and as changeable as a wisp of wind. Always cold, she clutches a wrap about her shoulders and complains about the smeeching fire in the parlour.
    H er thin, imperious summons eventually brings a houseboy who settles the wood further into the grate and works the bellows to invigorate the flames. “That’s better.” She coughs weakly and her rheumy eye, following him from the room, catches sight of me standing by the window. “Mary? What are you doing up and about so soon after childbed? Stupid girl, if you were mine I’d have you whipped for the trouble you’ve brought upon us.”
    I step forward, lean into the noxious odour of her body. “I am Anne, Grandmother, not Mary. She is still abed where she should be.”
    She chews her gums, the lines of her face shifting and quilting. “Oh yes, so it is. The plain one, I see that now.”
    She retreats into her thoughts and for a fleeting second I wonder what old women think about. They have no use for fine gowns or suitors and, due to her lack of teeth, even her dinner has to be ground to a fine mince and can bring her no joy.
    Yet Grandmother was once my age, balanced on the cusp of life and full of hopes for the future. How must it feel to be at the end? To retire to bed at night not knowing if your eyes will open on the morrow?
    Something shifts on her lap and her dog, Merlin, emerges from the recesses of her many layers. He opens a pink mouth and stretches, his tail beating against her thin chest. As he leaps from her knee, Grandmother grabs but fails to catch him, and he lifts his leg against the hearthstone. She emits another feeble cough. “Take him outside, child, before he fills the room with the stench of his shite.”
    Grateful for the chance to escape I grab the dog , who snuffles and snorts, trying to lick my face. His breath is ripe with all the things he has eaten that were better left untasted, and I avert my nose and hurry outside.
    In the garden , I drop him to the ground. While he leaves a ripe curling turd on the gravel, I begin strolling among the emerging flowers. Spring is here now, warmer days interspersed with sudden unnecessary showers that leave the fresh grown leaves bejewelled with diamond rain drops. From an open casement I hear baby Catherine begin to wail, and shortly afterwards her nursemaid begins to sing gently in an attempt to lull her back to sleep.
    Poor Mary is still kept close in her chamber until such time as she can be churched. It seems a shame to be incarcerated indoors on a day like this, when the sun is shining and the world is waking up to the joys of love.
    I visit Mary in her chamber every afternoon , and most days I find her deep in the megrims of motherhood. A wet nurse has been engaged and my sister’s breasts are tightly bound to stop the milk. Yet she complains of pains, and her nose is red and beginning to peel from too much weeping.
    She thought the king would come, just once, to look upon her daughter , but there has been no word from him. Will, who spends his time wearing out his mount by dashing to and fro between court and his wife at Hever, brings royal congratulations but that is all. We all know there will be no acknowledgement. Not now.
    “If he just came once, to ensure all is well with us, it would be something.” She weeps again, bringing her knees up beneath the bedcovers, curling into her own misery.
    I peer at her child and decide she looks a little better today. It is as if one of the maids has smoothed out her wrinkles a little bit. She is more like a human now, and less like a monkey. She peers at me through slit eyes and lets out a bubble of wind, a trickle of milk on her chin. I have yet to see a new born babe I admire. Perhaps it would be better if they came into the world at a few months of age, when they have grown into their skin a little and can look around, pay more attention to what is going on about them.
    I turn my attention back to Mary.
    “For goodness sake, Mary. Crying will