Chapter Text
On the morning of September 7, Anne woke up with an aching low in her stomach. Shoving aside the heaps of tissues littering her bedspread, she climbed out of bed and went over to her bookshelf. Moving aside a copy of Exit, Pursued by a Bear, she pulled out the books that she kept hidden at the back of the shelf. Selecting her favourite, a well-worn, dog-eared copy of “The Life of Elizabeth 1” by Alison Weir, she opened it, settled back down on her bed, and began to read. She was only partially oblivious to the tears streaming down her cheeks and the hollow feeling in her heart, but pretended she didn’t notice and continued to read anyways.
Downstairs, things were just as chaotic as normal, if not much more so. Jane and Aragon were frantically trying to finish the breakfast they were making to bring up to Anne, working around Kitty. She was wrapping the scrapbook, having ignored Jane’s help and instead wrapping it in her favorite sparkly pink paper. Cathy watched slightly anxiously, multitasking, as she was also arranging the flowers and chocolates. Cleves was cleaning the dishes from their breakfast, complaining loudly as she did so that she had gotten the worst job.
Jane swerved around Kitty, a pan of sausages in her hands, trying to find Anne’s favourite plate. Aragon poured orange juice into a green cup. Cleves put the last dish on the drying rack, and Cathy placed the box of chocolates on the tray. Just as Kitty finished the last bow, Jane found the plate and piled the food onto it. For better or for worse, they were ready.
Anne was still reading the book when she heard footsteps on the stairs outside her room. Sighing, she put it down on her bedside table and hastily moved aside the tissues she’d managed to collect once again on her bed, throwing them into the bin. When the door opened, she sighed with relief. It was only Kitty, who seemed to be very excited about something and was doing a very bad job of hiding it.
“Hi Anne…” the younger Howard cousin said, shifting back and forth between her feet nervously. Anne smiled at her cousin, trying to show her that it was okay to come talk to her.
“Hey, Kit-Kat. What’s up?” she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible. Kitty hid her face in her hands, trying to hide her excitement, but Anne mistook it for sadness. Reaching her arms out towards Katherine, she swept her into a big hug. Rather than curing the sadness Kitty actually didn’t have, Anne felt a large knot of tension leave her body, and she instantly relaxed. Sometimes all she needed was a Kitty hug to start feeling better.
Anne pulled away first, as Kitty had felt how her cousin reacted and stayed in the hug, knowing that it was helping. The older queen turned over to her bed and grabbed a bookmark, carefully inserting it in her current place.
“I was wondering if you’d maybe come downstairs with me? It’s breakfast time, and I worry about you when you don’t eat…” Kitty trailed off, looking at Anne, praying that she had fulfilled the mission Jane had given her, (“She’ll be most likely to come with you”, Jane had told her while shoving her towards the stairs). Anne looked contemplative for a second, and then nodded her assent.
“Sure, just let me get dressed first.” she agreed. Evidently, Anne had decided to pretend that this day didn’t exist, because she wouldn’t talk about it, and Kitty didn’t think she’d ever gotten dressed before breakfast unless Jane bribed her. She sat down on the bed and waited as her cousin put on tight jeans and a green top, brushed out her hair and put it up, and finally put on more makeup than she’d ever worn for just the others before.
Eventually, Anne was ready, and Kitty carefully led her downstairs, making sure to knock over the large potted plant in the hallway that she’d agreed would be the signal they were coming. Anne helped her clean it up, and then they continued along their way. When they should have just stopped at the kitchen, where they all normally ate breakfast, Kitty took Anne’s arm and continued to pull her through to the living room.
“Kitty, why aren’t we-”
Anne stopped as soon as they were inside the room.
The four other queens were all on the couches, sitting comfortably, but when Anne and Kitty walked in, they all tensed slightly. The green beanbag chair Anne had found their first week in this century was placed in the middle of the room, their breakfast tray Kitty had bought to serve them all breakfast in bed on the anniversary of their marriages to Henry placed next to it. The matching pink beanbag Anne had forced Kitty to get was empty, so Kitty gently guided Anne to the green one and sat down on her own.
“What is this?” Anne asked, her voice breaking slightly as she set the breakfast tray on her lap.
“Just eat, love.” Jane said softly. “We’ll explain once you’ve finished. Don’t think I haven’t noticed my food trays have been half-finished when I pick them up.”. Anne nodded slowly, raising a fork of eggs to her mouth.
Breakfast passed far too quickly and far too slowly at the same time. They all tried to make polite conversation, but Anne was too confused to properly respond, and everyone else was too excited to really talk. When Anne finally finished, Kitty began to bounce nervously. Cleves, never one to be anxious about anything, looked like she was going to swallow her tongue. Cathy and Jane were holding hands, both of them looking especially pale. Anne sat back, folding her hands in her lap.
“Alright, what’s going on?” Anne finally asked. Jane looked at Aragon, who sighed and leant forward.
“Anne, on this day in 1533, I was at Buckden Palace, praying with all my might that you wouldn’t do what I had never done, give Henry a healthy son. I will admit, I felt a small victory at the fact that you had a daughter. But I also felt sympathy for you, because knowing Henry as I did, I knew he wouldn’t respond kindly to what he would see as an insult. I hadn’t seen my daughter, my Mary, in what felt like forever. I knew how it was to bear Henry a daughter, and I knew he had no patience left, like he did for me at the beginning.
Knowing you now, I know you miss your Elizabeth just as much as I miss Mary. Today is your baby girl’s birthday, Anne, and we wanted to do something special for you. This will be a hard day, and you will miss her forever, but we hoped we could ease some of the pain by sharing what we remember with you. This is for you, Anne.”. As she finished her speech, tears were already filling Anne’s eyes, and Jane handed her the two wrapped presents, tapping the one containing the book and mouthing to her to open it first.
Usually, Anne tore into presents with reckless abandon, but today she carefully edged the tape away from the seams, with only a small remark to Kitty about the sparkly paper. She unfolded the paper, revealing the scrapbook inside. Jane had written on the front cover, in her swoopy, pinterest-style writing, “Project Lizzie”. They’d glued a bunch of different pictures of Elizabeth all over the cover as well, and when Anne caught sight of it, she stifled a sob.
“What-what is this?” she asked, her voice breaking as she opened the book.
“We’ve all made a section about our time with Elizabeth and how much she loved you, Anne. You don’t need to read it now, but that’s what it is.” Parr explained, her voice not much louder than a whisper as she tried to keep it steady. Anne nodded, but continued to carefully flip through it, not reading, just scanning the pages. She ran her fingers over the pressed flowers from Jane’s page, dropped a load of glitter on her lap from Kitty’s, and when she had finished scanning through, looked up at them all with a large smile. Tears were pouring down her cheeks, but none of them had seen her that happy in a long time.
“Thank you,” she whispered, “it’s beautiful.”.
Anne flicked through the pages of the scrapbook one more time, beaming widely, yet somehow also the saddest smile they’d ever seen. They all gave her a few more minutes to look through the book, although all she was doing was staring at the pictures on the cover, running her fingers over the red hair gently. Anne was imagining that the painted red hair was the same hair she’d once ran her fingers through, real and soft. She began to tear up more heavily, and Jane carefully pulled the book away so as not to damage any pages (although she had laminated it, knowing there probably would be tear tracks covering the pages at some point) and handed Anne a kleenex in exchange.
Once Anne had calmed down a bit, Cleves picked up the second gift from its position on the floor and handed it to her. Anne tilted her head slightly in confusion, but once again carefully and delicately unwrapped the paper from the canvas. It was face-down, so she turned the thing over and held it up. And then stopped.
“How-who-what-” she tried to ask, but was stopped by tears. Kitty moved over to her and placed a gentle hand on her back.
“Catalina painted that for you, Anne. Then Anna and Cathy went to the photo store and they made it into a canvas. We thought you’d like to put it on your wall.” she explained. Anne smiled at Aragon.
“Thank you, Catalina. But- I know how you’d know what I looked like-but how did you get Lizzie? It looks-that looks just like her. Just like she used to look when she was little.”
“Jane helped me. She knew how Elizabeth would have looked, because she was your lady, so I asked her to give me a physical description. It wasn’t hard, the child looked enough like you and Henry I could piece it together, and enough like my Mary that I could get the youth of her-”.
Anne cut her off by launching herself at Aragon, pulling her into a tight hug and murmuring thank-yous into her hair. Aragon hugged back just as tightly. When Anne pulled away, she went to each of the others and gave them a hug as well, ending at Kitty, who she just basically collapsed on top of on the beanbag.
“Do you think we could watch a movie today?” Anne asked shyly. The others nodded their assent.
“What movie, love?” Jane said. Anne went over to her bag she used to go to the library and pulled out two dvds, placing them on the coffee table.
“Elizabeth, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” Aragon read aloud. “Of course we can watch those, Anne. Go ahead and pop the first one in.”
And so the six queens ended up piled on top of each other on one couch, watching movies all day about the little girl so many of them had loved. The little girl’s mother fell asleep halfway through the fifth movie, but the others decided not to wake her, for they doubted she’d slept in a week. Eventually, she woke up again, but not in the living room.
She was in her own bed, in pajamas, and when she opened her eyes, they were met with a beautiful canvas painting of her and her little daughter, placed on her wall. She stared at the painting for some time, drinking in every little detail of the baby who had long since grown up.
Rolling over to her bedside table, the mother of the Virgin Queen picked up the scrapbook her friends had made for her and picked it up, opening it to the first page and beginning to read.
That was how Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII, the first queen to be executed in England, the infamous seductress, or the innocent victim, but most importantly, the mother of Elizabeth I, one of the best monarchs Europe has ever had, spent the night of her daughter’s birthday. Reading stories about the little toddler, the young girl, and the young woman her friends had known and loved, and who she loved most of all. She fell asleep that night with dried tear tracks painting her cheeks, but a small, content smile, and she dreamt of days long gone, days when she was with the happiest thing in her life.