Read Online Between Two Kings by Olivia Longueville - Free Book Online Page A

had stabbed him in his heart with her vile, insidious betrayal. Henry believed that only his Jane, with her sweetness and kindness, and time would heal the wounds of his heart.
    Henry blinked, trying to push away a fit of anger and the image of Anne’s face from his mind. He needed to focus on the meeting with Cromwell. He turned to face his chief-minister, his gaze hard, but with some contradictory emotions playing in his aquamarine eyes.
    “How is Lady Anne feeling?” Henry inquired unexpectedly even to himself.
    Cromwell sighed. He had already noticed that Henry seemed to be in a moody state of mind. “Your Majesty, she is doing well, although the labor was rather difficult and she lost some blood.” He didn’t say that she had lost much blood. The king didn’t need to know that Anne almost died bringing her child into the world.
    The king closed his eyes for a moment. “Will she recover from childbirth?”
    Cromwell gave a curt nod. “Yes.”
    Able to read the king’s emotions at a glance, Cromwell realized that Henry was hesitating, thinking about Anne’s fate and her punishment. Cromwell had known the news about the birth of the boy would put the king out of countenance. Henry was hesitating, and the chief minister was afraid that the king might have decided to spare Anne’s life, preferring an alternative option, like sending her to a nunnery instead of executing her. He couldn’t allow Anne Boleyn to live.
    Cromwell knew that the king was furious at the stage when the slandering rumors about Anne Boleyn’s behavior began to spread. Cromwell still remembered Henry’s rage when the king had heard about the allegations brought against Anne because if the queen was guilty of such vile crimes, she not only placed the line of royal succession in jeopardy with her adultery but by becoming pregnant to one of her lovers she could put a bastard child into a royal cradle.
    Cromwell also knew that Henry had been more than shocked with the results of the investigation that discovered and proved Anne’s infidelity to the king. Cromwell was not a fool and saw that the king had been heartbroken when he received the news that the investigation had found solid evidence of Anne’s guilt. The minister was clever enough to understand that Henry could have never imagined that his own entrusted and powerful councilors, mainly Cromwell himself, might have taken advantage of the situation and fabricated numerous charges against the queen, granting the king a free path to a new, undisputed marriage with another woman he loved.
    Cromwell convinced Henry that the investigation had been made scrupulously and that all the trials of the presumed traitors had been completely fair. If the king had known that all the evidence against Anne and the accused men had been faked, he would have been horrified, not willing to acknowledge that he had wanted to use that chance to get rid of Anne and be free so as to marry another woman. Cromwell understood that Henry would have blamed his advisors and the entire world instead of himself, making others the recipients of his wrath, if he had known the truth.
    Cromwell himself engineered the downfall of Anne Boleyn, whose brother and friends had been murdered by the king. The twenty-six noblemen, the members of the jury, tried Anne and found her guilty because they needed to please the King of England, even if they had to sentence an innocent, anointed queen and several other people to death. All the judges had to vote guilty as they were afraid of acting otherwise, fearful they might have been accused of being Anne’s lovers and that they might have displeased their sovereign.
    Therefore, the court, presided over by Anne’s own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, in his capacity of lord steward, unanimously declared Anne Boleyn and others guilty of all the charges. Knowing that Anne was found guilty and completely shocked with the thought that Anne had slept with her lovers in the royal bed, where the