The Other Side of Anne (14 page)

Anne awoke on her apartment bed, and pain squeezed her in every direction. Her neck throbbed most of all.
Can this be? I am alive.
Anne’s theory had been correct, but she allowed no celebrations, not yet. She pressed fingers into her neck, feeling it. No bumps or ridges. Nothing. She examined herself in the bathroom mirror, and the pain pervading her body vanished like vapors, like ghosts. She was the same as always. Dead in 1536. Alive here.

Pray God no more nosebleeds.

Anne shuddered. She remembered the shoes, the sad dirty shoes in their subdued colors, remembered the pinprick at her neck before her head fell. Her executioner had been skilled indeed, for much pain had been spared her. For an instant, Anne wished her executioner had been clumsy. The neck of Mary, Queen of Scots, had not been as disposable. Her executioner had to strike it thrice, and she had no doubt endured terrible pain.

Anne wished pain had filled her last moments of life in 1536. Pain was some
thing she could carry with her and secure in her heart to remind her to appreciate happiness. What she had instead amounted to a puny neck prick. Her Majesty tossed aside so easily. Dirty shoes.

Sobs racked Anne’s body,
angry and relieved sobs. She started to dial Avery. What would she say?
Please come. Now. It is over. I am fine now. Let us start our lives together. And there is Benjamin. He is out there. He is playing God again.

Anne stopped the call before it went through. She was strong.
She could handle this herself, and she found Nate outside. “Take me to Benjamin.”

**

Nate led Anne to Benjamin’s office. Benjamin wore the Pegasus security guard uniform, and his hair was immaculately groomed. He rose from his chair to greet her. “What brings you here, Anne?”

“I think you know.”

Benjamin licked his lips and looked to Nate. “Please excuse us.”

Nate left, and Benjamin indicated a chair for Anne.

“I shall stand,” she said, and a thought hit her. What if Benjamin attended her execution because of the words she was about to say? What if he was at her execution because she
told
him he was? And he went to ensure history would not change.

No.

His eyes were flinty, steely. Unsurprised. He knew why she was here.

“The time machines
function just fine,” Anne said.

Benjamin nodded. “You are correct.”

“Why did you lie?”

He shrugged. “I take occasional journeys into the past. I bring no one forward. I am a sightseer, that is all.”

Anne’s rage grew. “What else have you lied about?”

“I have something to show you. Please excuse me a moment.” Benjamin left the office, and Nate entered a few minutes later.

“I am to take you to Ward C,” Nate said.

“The medical offices? Why?”

“I do not know.” Nate’s voice was uneasy. Strained.

“Did you know?” Anne asked.

“About what?”

“About the time machines not being broken.”

Nate’s eyes widened in what seemed to be genuine surprise. “That cannot be. We have worked so hard to get them back up.”

“Oh, they a
re up,” Anne snapped. “Believe me.”

“To Ward C, ma’am.”

Anne touched her hand to Nate’s shoulder. She regretted not getting to know him, at least superficially. Maybe he was a good guy. “Nate?” she asked. “What kind of man are you?”

Nate glanced up. Cameras.
Of course.
He would not brazenly betray his employer. “Please come along, ma’am.”

**

Benjamin asked Nate again to leave, and he complied. “I have a surprise for you,” Benjamin said to Anne. “I hope you will accept this token as my apology. You may do with him as you wish. Take your revenge upon him. The secret is ours.”

“Him?”

“In the few minutes you took to walk here, I spent an hour in 1547. Come.”

Benjamin led Anne into the first room on the right. In bed was a man, hardly recognizable and at the same time, quite recognizable. He moaned feebly in his sleep. His head was bald, and his skin sagged like a man
years older. His beard was white, thin and lifeless.

Anne’s heart clamped shut.
Oh my God.

“Your husband is dying,” Benjamin said. “Perhaps you would like to give him, as the saying goes, a taste of his own medicine.”

Anne gaped. This was not Henry. Could not be! This pale, sickly form was not her husband. Anne had read countless accounts of Henry’s final days. Delusions. Hallucinations. So feeble he could not lift a glass of water. Constant pain, inflamed ulcers on his legs, skin about to burst due to choked veins, open sores giving off an atrocious stench.

The words did not begin to compare to the reality, and Anne wanted to weep for the pitiful creature. Did she
retain some fondness for her husband after all? Or was she sorrowful to see this once-mighty ruler succumb to reality?

“
Take him back,” she said through clenched teeth.

“I cannot,” Benjamin said reasonably. “If I took him back, there would be two dying Henrys. Anne, take a few minutes. A few hours. Get used to the idea that the
power is yours, not his. You can torture him as he tortured you.”

Anne clenched her fists. Unclenched them. If this incident told her anything, it was this: Benjamin Franklin was dangerous. He
could not go on unrestrained. That
look
in his eyes! He actually thought he would please Anne.

Anguished moan
. Henry’s eyes fluttered open, and he managed to twist his neck. Husband and wife stared at each other, and the nearly five hundred years whooshed backward. She remembered meeting him the first time, her sister introducing them, remembered the gentleness with which he danced with her sister and then with her. She remembered his feverish love letters to her. His ardent desire.

“Anne,” he said,
his voice a croak. A smile lit his faded eyes and spread to his lips. “Anne, darling. Your hair.”

Anne touched her hands to her hair. “It is short,” she agreed.

“Mine own sweetheart, I have missed you.”

Delusions.
Henry must have forgotten he ordered Anne dead.

“Excuse me,” Anne said.

**

Nate drove Anne to Front Royal, and t
hrough her swirling haze of haunting thoughts, she managed to tell him what happened.

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I do not know.” Options whirred through her: get a doctor, wait, Nate was a doctor, he took care of Anne, Henry should get
some
treatment, just ignore Henry, let nature take its course.

But what to do about Benjamin?

The time was four a.m. when Nate pulled into Avery’s driveway. Nate stayed in the car, and Anne rang the doorbell. Avery answered a few minutes later, and Anne stepped into his arms, clutched her whole being to him. She cried, and Avery let her cry.

“I did it,” she said at last. “I died in 1536. But Henry’s here.”

**

Excitement filled Avery
as he drove to the Pegasus building. Excitement and shame. He was about to meet Henry VIII. That called for some excitement, no?

Anne’s gaze was numb, unbelieving. “Benjamin has to be stopped,”
she said. “I would rather kill him than kill Henry.”

Avery thought of h
is biological mother, thirteen or fourteen years old. If he stopped Benjamin, he risked forever losing his mother.
Just as well. History is not to be trifled with.

But the pull...the pull was so damn strong.

“I want to know my mother,” Avery whispered.

Anne rubbed her forehead. “We cannot get everything we wish.”

“But...” But there was no but. Some things in life never got resolved, and this would have to be one. Avery would have to let go of the teenage girl who gave birth to him. He had a bright future and a lovely woman to share it with. Looking to the past would do more harm than good.

**

Henry was moaning and writhing when Avery and Anne entered. The smell of disease, of death, hit Avery right away.
My God,
he thought. Whenever he pictured Henry, he saw the man from the famous portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger. Ironically, the portrait had been done about the time Anne was executed. In the portrait, Henry was strong and broad shouldered. While not handsome, he was authoritative. He had a presence, a joie de vivire. This was a man to be reckoned with.

The man in the bed was entirely different.

His anguish was tremendous, and Avery said: “Jesus. He needs a painkiller or something at least.”

It appeared that Benjamin had done nothing to ease Henry’s suffering. Avery could smell and see soiled bedclothes, no doubt
from bodily functions and erupting sores.

“Has he faded?” Anne asked Benjamin.

“Yes, a few times. You are safer not touching him.”

Anne went to Henry, and he stopped his groaning. He
shrunk back, his gaze fearful. “A ghost has come upon me!” he cried.

So he’s in his right mind now.
Avery slipped his cellphone out and took a quick picture, a real picture, none of this portrait business. The king and the queen together. He replaced his cellphone, and a weight crashed down on him. He was incapable of breath, and giddiness might as well have lifted him to the sky.

This is real.
Since Charles had told him about Anne, Avery had felt like his life was a dream. Even his brief travels to 1536, with some distance, had taken on the tinge of blurred reality. This was real now.

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in the flesh. Avery had a
picture
of the king and the queen. A picture worth billions of dollars.

Avery realized just how immense this was, how historic this moment was. It was the last, unwritten chapter of Henry VIII’s life, and h
is mind at last clicked in understanding of why his parents did what they did. They had abducted people. Kept people prisoner. For moments like this. They no doubt had pictures of Anne Boleyn and Benjamin Franklin together. Greatness, indeed.

Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. Their rivalry had been bitter, with Elizabeth ordering Mary’s beheading. But what if they had a chance to talk in modern time
s, to become friends? To find understanding and perhaps compassion?

Shit.

Avery gulped lungfuls of air, his thoughts scaring himself. Unchecked, he would do bad things. He was sure of it. So this program needed to be destroyed. Both he and Anne needed to move on and leave the past behind.

“Henry,” Anne
whispered.

He bellowed a tremendous cry of pain and squeezed his eyes shut. “Be gone, witch!”

“Morphine,” Anne said to Benjamin. “Overdose him so he will die peacefully.”

Benjamin blinked. “Pardon?”

“I harbor no interest in exacting revenge or anything of the sort. Perhaps I would if he were healthy and in control of his faculties. But dare you not retrieve him in any other form. Ever.”

Benjamin frowned. “But m
orphine? Your Majesty, I beg to differ.”

Your Majesty.
Avery bit his lip. So Anne was a queen again to Benjamin. A consort queen needed her king.

“This man lopped your head off,” Benjamin said. “And you propose for him a peaceful death?”

“His death is nothing but peaceful!” Anne shrilled. “He groans and screams in pain. His sores erupt. You shall get morphine, and you shall inject it yourself.”

**

Henry fell quiet not five minutes after the morphine injection, but still he lived—albeit with highly labored breathing.

“You did right,”
Avery told Anne.

She looked into her lover’s eyes and said a silent thank you. Then she went to her husband. 
She took his hand in hers, risking the possibility that if he faded, she would go with him. A frail hand it was, and he opened his eyes.

He smiled. “My flower,” he whispered. “I dream of you.”

Anne replayed the look in his eyes at their wedding and chose to believe that was the real Henry. She would do it for her daughter’s sake. And her own. She would not let bitterness drag her down. “Our child,” Anne said, “will be a great ruler. She will be a girl, name of Elizabeth.”

“Girl?” Raspy whisper.

“Girl,” Anne affirmed. “A girl more than ten boys together. A warrior girl, a warrior queen, a girl no match for anyone. You did what you set out to do. Your legacy is safe in our daughter.”