0945820950924859

“Some women are like that,” Rayley said, prodding his horse back into motion. “They look better
from afar.”
Trevor gave his own steed a gentle kick to the flanks. The horses had come courtesy of Brown’s own
farm, since being a constable was no more than a part-time occupation in these small towns, and
Trevor supposed he and Rayley had much to thank the man for. Who knows, perhaps in the process of
retrieving Anne Arborton from her love nest, they might also find the sort of criminal evidence that
would help Brown approach the Crown with a formal complaint on behalf of the village.
As they neared the castle, Rayley saw two swans come into view, floating gently on the surface of the
moat and he slowed his horse again to consider them.
“Now that is quite lovely indeed,” Rayley said to Trevor, who had pulled up beside him. “They say
swans mate for life, you know. An odd symbol for Hever, considering Anne Boleyn’s reputation for
infidelity.”
“Surely you don’t believe that,” Trevor said, his tone as sharp as if Rayley had condemned a personal
friend. “The charges of adultery were trumped up so that Henry could be rid of her when she failed
to give him a son.”
“I meant no particular offense against the lady,” Rayley said. “After all, we are talking of a romance
which soured more than three hundred years ago. Who among us living today can say if Queen Anne
was unfairly accused?”
“Well,” Trevor said, “at least she was thoroughly English.” His mind drifted back to the previous
evening with Brown at the pub and how the man had insisted on calling the Boleyn family “the
Bullens,” using their plain Kentish name rather than their affected French one. But the point was that
Queen Anne’s family had been of farm stock, the salt of the earth, their roots as thoroughly British as
those of the apple trees all around Trevor now. And that was what mattered at the end of the day.
Rayley was surprised at Trevor’s reaction, for his friend was usually a bit of a prig. He would have
assumed Trevor would be in greater sympathy with Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s devout but
beleaguered first wife, who had been tossed aside for Boleyn. But of course, Trevor could also be a
bit of a nationalist, so perhaps in his mind it was better to have an English-born whore on the throne
than a foreign-born saint. The man could be morally confounding at times, very nearly selfcontradictory.
And it furthermore occurred to Rayley, as he and Trevor remained paused in silence
gazing down upon the walls of Hever, that the painter LaRusse Chapman was much like the monarch
Henry VIII – taking one woman after another for his use, callously abandoning each when she failed
to met his needs.
“Emma says it’s haunted,” Trevor said abruptly.
“By Anne Boleyn?”
“Precisely. Legend claims you can see her at night, on a bridge. That oak one there, I should
imagine, that crosses the moat. The young King Henry came here to pay suit to her, you know. It is
where he proposed marriage, and they say that after her beheading, her spirit returned here,
presumably to a place where she had once been happy.”