Chapter Text
September 4th, 2028
My dearest Mae,
Typing this letter for you is one of the strangest things I have done in my life. I am sitting here at my desk, in front of my computer, with the brightness low, as I would any other morning. You, my love, are behind me, sitting on my bed. You seem to be taking your dolls on a space adventure, but your words are lost to me. Normally that would be because I would be concentrating on an article, or on my book.
But alas, today is not a common day. Until right now I would have never thought that written words would fail me as spoken ones do. Maintaining myself composed to not break down in front of you is taking up all my focus. I have spent ten minutes just to reach this second paragraph. The day outside is glorious, and once I turn off my computer you and I will go to the park. You will read every sign we see out loud, proud of how much your reading has improved. And I will smile and encourage you. I promise, my girl, that I will not let you know how much I am hurting inside.
Then we will come back and spend time with your aunties and siblings. The ones of us that are left, anyway.
After that, after a long and happy day, I will put you to sleep. I will tuck you in and give you a kiss as I hug you close. You will not know that it will be the last time you see me. With your beautiful sleepy smile you will wish me good dreams. And those shall be the last words you ever speak to me.
As you may have guessed, today is a bittersweet day because it is the last day I will spend by your side. I won't leave, I won't end my life. I will simply die, like auntie Kitty and auntie Jane already did.
It won't matter what I do, my beloved. I can stay indoors, or I can go outside. I can let my final hours be consumed by agonizing fear or attempt to lead a normal day. It will matter not. Something will happen, and I will die.
The others do not wish to consider this option, but it is something that I have been theorizing for some time now. Ever since your auntie Kitty died two years ago on February 13th, to be exact. The date, as the gruesome circumstances of her passing, raised some eyebrows; but the evidence was circumstantial.
However, after auntie Jane died last year precisely on October 24th I can no longer chalk these deaths up to mere coincidence. If my tribulations are correct, tomorrow will be my turn.
I do wonder how old you will be when this letter is given to you. I wonder how many of us will still be alive. Potentially only Lina, and maybe just maybe Anna. I can predict their deaths, too: auntie Anne will die on May 19th two years from now. Anna, your mother, will be forced to leave you on July 16th, 2033. And lastly your auntie Lina will join us on January 7th, 2038. Hopefully, if everything goes as I think it will, you will be raised by your siblings from then on and you will not be alone. That Mary, Lizzie and Eddie are here brings me respite. I may be obliged to leave you an orphan once more, but at least you will never be alone, my love.
Whenever you do receive this letter, you must have so many questions. How do I know I will die? How did I know when the others will? What sort of pattern did auntie Kitty and auntie Jane's deaths establish to make me reach this grim conclusion?
I will try to answer them all. I believe that I am the best person you can hear this story from, even if by the time you read it I will no longer be beside you. Consider this the last tale your mother has for you, the final narration I have for my precious child.
I think if I were alive, if we all were, this would be your favourite one to date. It would make you go wide-eyed with wonder in a way no other story has. Instead, given the circumstances, I am certain it will make you go glassy-eyed instead. And for that I apologize. If I had the slimmest of chances of evading my fate and remaining with you I would, no matter the consequence. But I have no say. And my lack of choice shall part us once more.
My chest aches thinking of the prospect of leaving you an orphan yet again (patience. I will explain what I mean by 'again' shortly). This may be the most painful moment of my life. But for you, my dearest, I will push forwards. Mummy has one last story for her beautiful little princess.
Well, 'little'. No matter how old you are when you get your hands on this, you will always be my little girl in my heart.
Alas, I am derailing. I promised you a tale, and one you shall get. A tale and an explanation. You deserve both, so without further ado, get comfortable. Seek your siblings' company if you do not wish to be alone. Locate any source of comfort you have.
Trust me. You are going to need all the comfort you can gather.
The 23rd of November, 2019, something unprecedented happened. Your four aunties, your mother and myself woke up after death. We appeared in the first house you knew, before the fire, in our rooms, as if we had always belonged in this timeline.
As unbelievable as it is, the six of us were the once queens of England. That which bound us together was our common husband, King Henry VIII. If you've learnt about him in school (or on your own time, my curious little bookworm) it must have struck you as odd that your family's names are so bizarrely similar. Catalina and her daughter Mary, Anne and her daughter Lizzie, Jane and and her son Edward, Anna, Katherine and Catherine... Lina being my godmother; Anne, Kitty and Jane being cousins... It is too much of a coincidence, don't you think?
I could spend the next few hours typing out all the evidence I have that we were, in fact, reincarnated. All the things we know that we should not, all the historical facts that we know are blatantly wrong in history books. But I need not do that. I hope you trust me, and if you do not you can ask your siblings. They, too, remember our first lives. You do not, but it only makes sense. You passed at around the age of two, long before you could form memories.
I can't even imagine how you will take to this news. I can only hope you do not mourn the life you never had. But if you must, feel no shame. Some times we need to grieve before we heal.
It was 8 PM when we opened our eyes to varying degrees of confusion. We were all in our rooms, as if we had been taking a simple nap and had not returned from the realm of the dead.
We woke up experiencing whatever thoughts and physical pain we had been in during our final hours. Lina could not breathe from the searing ache of her heart (she passed from heart cancer); Anne's neck was also in scorching pain, but a more piercing kind; Jane and I were torn from our lives and our children in the same fashion. The both of us were in nauseating, feverish agony, unable to even stand. Anna's source of discomfort was also her abdomen, but from her description it was a different type of pain. Equally debilitating, but not something I feel confident about accurately portraying.
Auntie Kitty passed out from the pain. A little heads up that explains a lot about her pains when she was alive: her execution was a bloodbath and a butchery, my girl. “Two swings of the axe” went down in history because Henry could not be bothered to admit he had hired an incompetent fool to execute a queen. Why else would our sweet Kitty's body have been dissolved in quicklime?
The bastard didn't want to leave any evidence.
If the pain were the only confusing part about waking up (this is how we named our resurrection, and how I will refer to it from here on out) we would have recovered much sooner. No, waking up was the most ethereal and complex experience I have lived in either life. I will try to put it into words as best I can.
We knew who we were. Auntie Lina and I were the only ones whose memories were intact. Auntie Anne, auntie Jane and Anna were missing fragments. And even though I have reasons to suspect this may not be the complete truth, auntie Kitty insisted to her dying day that she awoke a blank slate. She remembered her execution, that she had been queen, and nothing else.
Despite our awareness that we should, by all means, be in the earth, we knew of life in the XXIst century. Having the mindset of a Tudor queen and being able to accurately explain how electricity works, or what social media is, is disconcerting in a manner nothing else has been.
Our bodies were not our own; we looked nothing like we once had. And still every inch of our skin was familiar as if we had always lived within these bodies. We could also recognize each other, provided we had met in our first life, despite having never seen ourselves in these vessels.
These factors alone are already a recipe for disaster, but to make matters worse we had grudges and unresolved problems with one another. Lina blamed Anne for her misfortunes; Jane blamed herself for Anne's execution. Anne, your poor auntie, was overjoyed, thriving with joy and crying happy tears upon seeing Lina and Jane. Anne remembered her friendship with Lina vividly, as she did mourning her death. She did not, however, recall the enemyhood the two had been forced into by Henry.
Can you imagine your sensitive aunt dazed by the pain in her neck and the certainty she had just been beheaded, confused by her new life, bursting into tears at the relief of seeing her beloved Lina alive and well only to be pushed away? Figuratively and literally?
She could not speak for days after that. She did not know why her adored friend hated her.
Little by little she regained her memories; as did everyone. When Anne remembered the fate that had befallen Lina she fell into a self-destructive spiral, thinking her beheading was well deserved. She would not accept apologies from Jane, insisting that it was only fitting she had payed the price of her treachery with her life. You know how tender auntie Jane was, you can only imagine how much Anne's stance affected her.
But I am getting far ahead of myself. The three of them were one of the two main focal points if interpersonal distress this household had yet to go through. The other were your mother, auntie Kitty and myself.
Anna and Kitty had been close in their first life. As Anna's Lady in Waiting, Katherine and her had become inseparable. Kitty entered her service at fourteen, and was wrenched away from both Anna and her life three years later. Can you imagine Anna's happiness upon encountering a very much alive thirteen year-old Katherine? She was a month away from her fourteenth birthday, just like when she and Anna first crossed paths.
The second Anna's eyes landed on Kitty she made a promise. Nobody in this second chance was to touch a hair on her beloved Katherine's head. Your mother had been unable to save her once, but this time she would fail over her own dead body.
As ashamed I am to say this, and as inexcusable as it is, my feelings towards auntie Kitty were quite hostile at first. I despised her, blaming her for my forced marriage to Henry.
Be angry at me, or even hate me if you must. I know how close you were to your dearest auntie before her untimely death; although you barely remember it. I have not forgiven myself, either. The only thing I can say to explain (not excuse, for I cannot excuse it) my mindset was that I had been fed so many lies about Kitty at court. Lies about her as a person and about her as a queen.
Disliking Katherine equated to having personal problems with Anna, who had taken on the role of her guardian. It may be strange for you to imagine a time in which your mother and I could direct only insults and words sharp as knives at each other. But that was exactly the relationship we had back then.
The interpersonal problems would not remain contained to two clear cut groups, but that messiness is for later. For now I am concentrating on trying to convey how it was to wake up on that fateful night.
From what we gathered later on, we must have awoken at approximately the same time. Wails and shrieks filled the house. I, for one, knew I was Catherine Parr; but I also knew I was in a bedroom and that I needed to press a light switch to make it light up. Alas I could not, for any movement, even one as mild as rolling over in bed and reaching for the switch, was too nauseating. Along with Jane and Kitty I was the one who took the longest to gain autonomy.
After a single yelp of pain, Kitty passed out. Despite having never heard that voice Anna knew it was her dearest Katherine; the young Lady in Waiting turned best friend whose death she had always blamed herself for. Anna knew not what was happening, and she could barely sit upright from the tight pain in her abdomen, but you know your mother. She forced herself to stand and shambled in the direction she'd heard the scream. Unlucky for her, her first bedroom, before she moved into mine, was the one that was later Mary's, on the ground floor. How she made it upstairs even she could never explain, it was as if some force were giving her the strength to.
Apparently she got into the wrong bedroom twice. She found Anne huddled in a corner first, swatting away at invisible guards leading her to a scaffold five centuries in the past. Then Anna found Lina, paralyzed in bed gasping for breath, clutching her chest as if her heart wished to break through her ribcage and she desired to contain it. At this point, Anna had only seen your aunties in portraits. They were not the only ones who were screaming, and she had no personal bonds with them. She needed to prioritize, and thus she finally made it to her destination.
She found our Katherine unconscious in her bed. Her breathing was erratic and her face scrunched up in pain. Anna replaced Kitty's pillow with her lap and stayed with her until she awoke almost an hour afterwards. She later confessed to us that she found herself unable to remove her gaze from Kitty's face, running her fingers gently through her hair. She could not believe that they were both alive, but there was no way she was going to question it. Whatever was happening she had her dearest kitten back beside her. The others' agonizing screams could wait.
Anne was the next one to recover. As soon as reality became tangible for her and she found herself grounded in her room instead of the Tower of London she too wandered the house. Torn between having recognized Jane's and Lina's voices Anne came down from the attic and walked into the nearest bedroom, which happened to be Lina's.
Let me remind you that Anne held no memories of the enemyhood between them, whereas Lina did. Lina did not know of heart cancer, and she heavily suspected Anne had ordered her to be poisoned. When Anne, crying with joy and concern, sat on Lina's bed expressing her relief at finding her alive, Lina gathered all her strength to push her away. She screamed and screamed for Anne to leave, calling for guards that were not there.
We now know the word for Anne's understanding of the world in this life is 'ADHD', and that it comes with something known as 'Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria'. This was not, however, something any of us (herself included) were familiar with upon waking up. The sudden intensity of Lina's aggression struck Anne as if she had been kicked in the chest. And still your dear auntie forced herself to remain calm. Lina was disoriented as she had been, she thought at first. Why else would she be calling for guards?
Seeing as her presence alone was making Lina's awakening more painful Anne went to seek Jane. Jane could stand on her own, but her mind was still consumed by the daze of childbed fever. She roamed the house in despair, calling for Joan. She needed her Lady in Waiting, for the woman had her baby boy, Edward. Anne knew not of any Edward, but understood her cousin must have had a son before passing away. As such, while Jane wandered and wailed in heart-wrenching agony, Anne accompanied her to make sure she was safe.
Great part of the reason it took me such a long time to join the others was Jane's screaming. What we later learnt was ASD was foreign to me. My brain and its working was more of a stranger to me than my body which I could not recall having ever seen. I processed everything differently, Jane's wails were painful and filled me with frustration. How, then, had I been able to make it through loud court dances and Henry's yells without breaking down? I curled up in bed and covered my head with my pillow, hoping she would quiet down as soon as possible.
You may be wondering why Jane was delirious over being away from her child and I payed you no mind. It has nothing to do with the affection I feel towards you, my precious Mae. I did not remember you. My final hours during your birth were dazed. I didn't even mention you in my will, for I was not aware that you had been born. I remembered a pregnancy, yes, but I could not recall my baby. I was too far gone when you were placed in my arms to recall you. Until I started researching my first life I had no idea you existed.
I feel the need to apologize for this, my girl. I have no need to, since it was not my fault nor did I have any control over it; but if learning that I did not remember you upsets you I am sorry for causing you that pain.
Anne was still pacing with Jane and Anna continued to reassure herself that Katherine was real when Lina managed to walk. She later on explained she heard me whimpering, a sound I was not aware I was making. She recognized me, as she had met me as a child. I recognized her from the stories my mother told of her and the portraits I had seen. She was my godmother, and I had married her husband. The same husband she had loved until her dying breath. I thought she must hate me.
But she simply asked me what was wrong, and did not push me when she saw I struggled to speak. She stayed with me, in that dark room, holding my hand until Jane collapsed on the couch, consumed with grief over the loss of her baby. Anne held her, only then realizing that her own Lizzie was also absent. That was her second emotional strike of the night. Anne had been so engrossed in helping others that she had not stopped to think about herself for a second.
She described the sudden realization as complete denial. It felt as if her little girl would pop out from any room at any given moment and hug her. Holding Jane through her breakdown didn't feel real; it felt like a dream.
While Anne consoled Jane despite being unable to cope with her own feelings; and while Lina comforted me regardless of her comprehension of the source of my distress, Kitty opened her eyes.
She did so in a state we never quite saw her in again, and one in which you never met her. She woke up happy.
Those would be the only instants of her second life Katherine Howard would live the childhood she was so cruelly torn from in her first.
Anna says she practically sprung into her arms, overjoyed at seeing her again. Katherine didn't understand what was happening, either, but she had the one thing she had ever wanted: Anna by her side.
The following explanation is me getting ahead of myself, but I think some background information on their bond would come in handy here; as it will explain their behaviour towards each other for the rest of this story. Katherine came from a vicious and loveless family. All she ever yearned for in her first life was to be cared for and loved. Every single person she trusted her precious and fragile heart with betrayed her in the worst possible ways. Every person she loved placed her one step closer to the scaffold where she lost her life. People didn't care about -Katherine; they only cared about what they could get from her. Be that status and power or things best left unsaid. I will not divulge Kitty's private life, but I am certain if you've read anything about the Tudor period you will know what I am talking about. Just know that none of those relationships were consensual; and even if they had been Katherine was a child and could not, under any circumstances, consent. Do not let ignorant at best and vile at worst historians change your view on your dearest auntie.
The sole exception to that was Anna. Anna always cared about Katherine, developing a soft spot for her the day they met with how clueless the girl was. While Anna had a relatively good relationship with most her family she was taken away from them when her father forced her to marry Henry. After she hurt his ego (I will say this: I met Anna in our first life and she was the exact opposite of ugly) and he decided to divorce her she experienced international shunning and mockery. She made one friend in court before Katherine, Bessie Blount, but the woman died shortly after. After the divorce Anna was sent to live in Richmond, but there were no people who truly cared for her there; only people who tolerated her for her status as the 'King's Sister'. She was not allowed to remarry, and because of it she was deprived of her heart's deepest desire.
A little discussed, or little known, fact about your mother is that she always yearned to be that: a mother. She saw Henry's children as her own; but at most to them she was an aunt. She understood, it just made sense: they all had their own mothers and she had no intent to replace them.
So then, my dear, picture the following: a deathly lonely woman craving a family or at least someone who cared for her as a person and not a nobility title; and a loveless child used to being manipulated and abused needing affection with little to no regards for or knowledge of etiquette.
Yes, what I am saying is that the two completed each other in a way nobody else could have. They were mother and daughter five centuries before Anna decided to adopt her. Anna, however, always trod around Katherine with care, not wanting to add to her already crushing burden; and Kitty was raised to feel like a nuisance and something to take advantage of. Anna did not want to overstep any of Kitty's boundaries and Katherine did not wish to be clingy with Anna and become an annoyance to the only person who had ever cared about her.
Anna and Kitty stayed in the latter's room longer than the rest of us remained in ours, being the last to join us in the living room. Neither of them ever spoke of what happened during that time until our sweetest Katherine died. Only then did Anna tell me, on one of the many sleepless nights she suffered through, that they simply stayed together as if they had been glued, revelling in each other's company. Wordlessly reassuring the other that she wasn't alone anymore, that for once things had somehow, in some inexplicable way, worked in their favour; and nobody was going to do them apart again.
While they shared their silent reunion Jane had quieted at last, collapsing with exhaustion. Anne was still dazed, almost being able to hear her adored Elizabeth's laughter if she concentrated hard enough. Why had she been brought back without her sweetest girl?
But you know our Annie. She is always last on her list of priorities, and that was how she functioned when we woke up, too. As such, after making sure Jane would stay still and be fine on her own, Anne swallowed her grief down and made her way to Lina's bedroom. She needed to make sure her dearest friend was safe and sound as well.
The timing, however, was very unfortunate. As Anne made her way upstairs Lina and I descended. Lina was starving, and I was in a bit of a predicament with her: on the one hand I admired her and wished to stick close to the only source of familiarity and comfort in the mess that was reincarnation. At the same time, however, I feared she would hate me for having wed Henry. As much as I needed confirmation of her feelings to know whether it was right for me to lean on her, the fear of her rejection overpowered my searing doubts. So when instead of starting a conversation Lina frowned in pain and insisted she needed to eat something, I followed her without saying a word. The longer she didn't state that she despised me, the longer I could still count on my godmother.
We met Anne at the stairs and the following events have been burnt into my mind for all these years. Anne smiled, relieved, saying that she was so happy to see Lina again. She asked if she was feeling better, if she was still in pain.
And then Lina pushed her. With force.
Luck had it that Anne was only two stairs up, but she did lose balance and fell down. She didn't hurt herself too bad, but that rejection from an undoubtedly mentally stable Lina was more devastating than a blow to the head could have ever been. It was the first time I saw your auntie shut down. At first she didn't get up from her place on the blue carpet. She just blinked, staring at the ceiling. When Jane rushed to her side life seemed to come back into Anne. She shied away from touch as if contact with her skin would burn her. Anne retreated into a corner and sat there, huddled on the floor, stare blank.
While this event definitely marked a before and after in our poor Anne, it was shocking at least for Jane and myself as well. Jane, who had always idolized Lina and gone as far as to 'steal' Henry away from Anne as revenge for her 'replacing' Lina...
Well, there is no easy way to finish that sentence. You must first, my child, understand the complex relationship they three had, too.
Lina and Anne had been close when the second was Lina's Lady in Waiting. Then Henry tired of Lina since she did not bear any surviving male heirs for him and started looking for lovers elsewhere. There was the repulsive and predatory affair with Bessie Blount (she was Lina's Lady as well) first, and then the bastard set his sights on the Boleyn sisters. Mary first, and later on Anne caught his eye with her witty personality and remarkably good looks.
Anne did not want his attention, though. For one she was in love with another man, Henry Percy. And secondly, she had no desire of hurting Catalina like that. Anne resisted Henry's advances for seven years until she caved in. She simply realized that Henry would get rid of his wife regardless, and that if it wasn't Anne that replaced her it would be someone else. As such, to save herself and her family from a grizzly fate by angering the king, Anne accepted his advances much to her disgust.
Lina was irate at her for it, losing all consideration for her as a friend and as a person. She was also a very adored queen, and as such Anne was framed as a temptress, a witch, and all manner of heinous, dehumanizing things, by nobles and peasants alike. Anne was hated for a title she had never wanted, and lost one of her closest friends for it as well.
Later on, she would even lose her head.
Henry was a monster.
I'm not saying Anne didn't make a series of questionable choices, especially regarding Mary, during her reign. But the facts are that she was no witch, no derogatory terms used for sexually active women, and no power-hungry seductress. She may have revelled in the power that being queen gave her, but that was simply her accepting her role of the villain. No matter what she did, or what she said, everybody saw her as a witch and hated her without giving her a chance. Eventually their hatred built up inside of her and she decided to embrace it. If they wanted a scheming queen then that they would have. If Anne ever was a monster (which, despite her constant self-deprecation, I doubt) she was a monster forged by hatred.
And Lina had a lot to do in that. Instead of understanding Anne's plight, or admiring how hard she had fought to avoid Henry, she added lumber to the fire raging in the people when Anne was crowned queen. Anne's affection and compassion for Lina turned to venom in her heart. Any positive feeling left towards her Anne burnt to ashes.
Jane was also Lina's Lady, and a very devout one at that. The two were close, much closer than Jane was to her cousin Anne. Jane was also gullible and easy to manipulate. Unlike Lina and Anne, Jane was meek and subservient. She had been raised to become (read: manipulated and abused into becoming) the perfect wife (by the patriarchy's standards). Jane's loyalty to Lina was unfaltering, and so when her family pushed her in the right direction to try getting Henry's affection, Jane accepted without a second thought.
She even grew to love him. 'Stockholm's Syndrome' it's called nowadays.
Do not be too harsh on your auntie for that. Yes, she was rather cruel towards Anne (the locket incident comes to mind); but if anything Jane acted out of ignorance. She was convinced that Henry would simply divorce Anne and send her away, as he had Lina.
Jane could not have suspected Anne would be the first British queen to be executed. Getting Anne killed was never her intention.
She didn't talk about this guilt so much after the first few years; but it did pop up in conversations some times. Last time I talked to Jane about this was a few months before her death. She couldn't sleep, neither could I, and we went to the porch with some tea. Looking at the sky, the moon reflected in her eyes, she told me there was as much of Anne's blood on the scaffold as there was on her hands. That she may not have been the executioner; but when she looked in the mirror it was all she saw. Some times she dreamt of holding the sword herself.
After watching Anne's beheading, Jane grew afraid of Henry. But that's more of a matter of the inner workings of her mind and less a matter of the relationship dynamics between Jane, Anne and Lina.
Jane's remorse over Anne's horrendous fate did not, however, wash away her admiration towards Lina. After all, she could not blame Anne's downfall on her in any capacity.
The wide-eyed look of horror on Jane's face when she saw Lina, her hero, push Anne down some steps, was haunting. She stood there, frozen for a couple of seconds, before shaking her head and running up to Anne. Since we did not know that Anne has ADHD, when she scooted away from Jane's touch Jane interpreted it as rejection, too. And it's not like she could blame Anne for hating her, either. She hated herself as well for convincing Henry to leave Anne.
Suddenly Jane was alone. Her cousin, as far as she was concerned, despised her. And Lina, her friend, her ideal of royalty and everything good in the world, had just hurt a person in cold blood. Jane stayed in the living room, casting long, glistening glances at Anne and Lina. But she did not let a single tear fall.
It was a shock for me, too. That Catalina of Aragon, who I'd heard so many stories of growing up, had harmed someone directly... And after Anne looked so relieved and hopeful to see her, too...
It made me wonder if I was taking the right side by following Lina to the kitchen. Looking back on it, maybe I should have stayed in the living room. Pushing Anne off some stairs, no matter how small the fall was, was entirely out of place.
Lina didn't speak to me once in the kitchen. She regarded the fridge and the microwave with curiosity, but also knew how to operate them. Every time she did something right she raised an eyebrow in surprise. It was as if she'd heard, theoretically, that there are noodles you can put in a metal box and cook in under a minute; but she wasn't actually expecting it to work.
I wasn't, either. All our knowledge of the XXIst century back then was purely theoretical.
On the kitchen table were some papers. ID cards, contracts... All of our legal papers. Apparently five of us were renting the house. Kitty was Anna's legal charge. We also had medical records and every other relevant bit of paperwork we could need.
Lina seemed disappointed when she said we'd have to tell the others. We needed to sort this situation out so we could find out how to go our separate ways as soon as possible.
I interpreted she must not want me around, that she had cared for me out of a sense of obligation. However, I did not tell her. It was to be expected that she would hate me, after all. I married the man she loved, there were bound to be grudges.
When we entered the living room again Anna and Kitty were coming downstairs. Now, for as much as I have described Katherine as a child (and by all means she was) she didn't act as such. She carried herself with the elegance and grace of a queen. She wasn't terrified, clinging to Anna and shrunken. She held her head high, her back straight, and she greeted everyone with little hesitation and a lot of politeness.
A much more civilized way of addressing us than my eye roll the second I saw her.
There was a lot of hatred directed Kitty's way, in fact. I blamed her for my marriage; but Lina, Anne and Jane were all wary of her for being a Howard. Despite being met with indifference at the kindest and glares at the worst, Katherine stood her ground. What I saw at that moment as an egotistical child thinking too highly of herself I now see as admirable. There was this child, this thirteen year-old, in a room full of adults who were not subtle about their dislike towards her, keeping a calm and collected persona.
We often described Kitty as 'an adult in a teenager's body'. As accurate of a description as that is, it's sickening to think about what situations she had been forced into to grow up so fast. There was no spark of mischeviousness in her, no spontaneous teenage rebellion at any point. Just a lot of bottled up emotions ready to burst hidden beneath a steel façade.
Then again, it shouldn't have been that surprising. I was there the day she died. I saw how at ease she was, after some comprehensible trembling, as she spoke her final words. I witnessed the grace with which she knelt before the scaffold. She died in such a queenly fashion it should not have been disconcerting to find that she was gentleness personified five centuries later.
Lina and I distributed what we'd found in the kitchen. Those of us who'd never met introduced ourselves. Nobody made an effort to try making sense of what we had experienced, we all just knew we'd been reincarnated. With that same certainty we knew we had no idea how or why. It was as ingrained in us as knowledge of electronics. We shouldn't be so positive, and yet we inexplicably were.
Granted, we are reincarnated Tudor queens. I don't think there's supposed to be anything explicable about that.
One of the things that stands out to me about the collective paper reading to this day was Anna's smile after finding out she was Kitty's legal guardian. After seeing the disdain with which her beloved Katherine was met she'd kept this stone expression all the time, mouth twisted at the corners into a scowl. But... You know your mother's warm, golden retriever-like personality, Mae? You know that smile of hers that makes the world a better place? That's what we saw when she read that Katherine was her responsibility. At the time she'd been terrified that she would be Anne or Jane's charge, since they were family.
And then she was just incredibly happy that she'd get to care for someone in this life. At the moment she thought that was as close she'd ever get to being someone's mother.
Another instant that sticks out in my memory was Jane's rejection of Lina. Seeing that they're married now (allow me to make a side note to say you were the world's most adorable ring bearer) and how much they love each other it must be confusing to picture this; but do remember that Jane had just seen Lina's perfection crumble to dust before her.
Jane had Dyslexia, as we now know. But again, back then we did not. She simply thought she was barely literate. So when she shyly muttered that she couldn't read her papers, someone had to offer a helping hand. Lina did, apparently glad to see one of her most loyal Ladies regardless of her initial indifference towards her.
Despite being our most soft-spoken and indecisive family member, when Lina reached over to grab Jane's papers, Jane pulled them out of reach, stating that she'd figure them out later.
Needless to say, her best attempts were insufficient; she did not figure them out. Not until she started learning of ways to deal with Dyslexia.
Lina, for a split second, was visibly flabbergasted at having been rejected by Jane, of all people. But she was too annoyed over sharing a room with Anne at the moment to address that, so she continued sorting through her own life papers.
A lot of talking was done that night, and little of it was handled maturely. Off-hand remarks, passive-aggressive comments, outright ignoring certain people... It was a mess. You must be so confused reading about your family treating each other like this. I can't say what will befuddle you more: the part about being reincarnated or the fact that there was a point in time we could not stand each other.
I wish I were with you to see your reaction, my love.
But that's beside the point.
We reached one conclusion: we had six months left in our contract to our landlord. With our jobs we could not afford to pay the rent of the house and also some other flat so we didn't have to live together. We ran the numbers many times, the math simply did not work. All in all, we would have to tolerate each other for half a year.
We decided it would be best if we were to stay out of each other's ways as much as possible in that time. Ignoring each other was better than arguing until our throats were raw. With that, we went to sleep. We may have just woken up, but our bodies were exhausted as if we hadn't rested in weeks.
Anne left first. She hadn't spoken much throughout the whole meeting, limiting herself to curt nods and at most whispered monosyllabic answers. It was her first experience going non-verbal from stress. Later on she admitted she was afraid she had lost her voice, and that it took all her self-control not to shatter. After she closed her bedroom door she had a full breakdown, she felt as if she'd been beaten with a stick. Why were we alive? Why had she been beheaded? Why did Lina hate her?
Why had she been cursed to be brought back without her daughter?
Jane followed shortly after. She tried reaching Anne, but Anne waved her off. Until they started talking to each other much later there were two interpretations of that situation: Anne thought Jane was going to request her help reading and wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone; and Jane thought Anne hated her.
When Jane closed her door, she cried into her pillow until she fell asleep. As painful as thoughts of Eddie were, she months later admitted that she experienced a different brand of grief that night: being confronted with the woman whose death she was convinced she was responsible for.
Anna and Kitty sorted their papers into a neat little stack and headed to the stairwell. When Kitty bade Anna a good night, Anna grabbed her by the sleeve of her jumper and asked her to stay with her, if she pleased. She couldn't believe she had Katherine again, she was afraid of letting her out of her sight. But she was also, as I said, respectful of your auntie's boundaries, so when Katherine said she would only stay until Anna fell asleep, Anna agreed.
They lay together side by side and Kitty asked why Anna had filed both their papers together. Anna assumed it was a given that, wherever the two went to after the six month period, they would go together. Kitty did not understand why Anna would want to stay by her side indeffinitely, but the thought alone almost made her cry happy tears. She rolled over and offered to have a sleepover with Anna instead, and the two drifted off into slumber happily cuddled up.
Anna finally had her dearest friend back, and Kitty, though taken aback by all the negative feelings we had for her, could not care less: she was wanted by the only person she needed. As long as she had Anna, she would be alright.
Lina stayed a little longer to wash the dish she'd used. I... I didn't know what to do, Mae. I wanted to run back to my room, to postpone the conversation until the morning. But I found that I could not. The thought that Lina might hate me, that the one person I at least knew of in all the confusion, may want me to stay away...
I couldn't handle it. And since I couldn't I just asked her and prayed for the best.
Lina... Well, you have to understand, she is fiercely, fiercely loyal. It took her a while, much more than a few hours, to accept that she had been loyal to a monster all her life. Because, in her eyes, if she had been loyal to a bad person, then she must be one as well. She could not accept that, she could not think that about herself. And so she told me, in no uncertain terms, that despite not hating me she was rather displeased with my choice.
...Choice? I had no choice to marry Henry. I was forced to, I had no say in it, powerless! I never loved him, I had not wanted to marry him.
I loved someone else back then. Someone as bad as Henry.
But more on that later.
Lina's words hurt, they hurt more than if she'd simply said she hated me. After I returned to my room without as much as bidding her good night I crawled into my bed and found that I could not sleep. Despite being exhausted, despite needing to rest, I could not. I got up and turned on my laptop instead. I didn't know how I knew the password, I just did. I was a writer. And if I could not sleep, then I would write. If only my tribulations and theories, but I needed to get the words out of my head.
Only once I emptied my mind of every thought and hypothesis did I find that rest could claim me.
And as for Lina, it took her a while to be open with us about what she'd felt that night. Partly because she was one of the hardest people to reach emotionally at first, and partly because she would grow to be ashamed of her actions.
She learnt that she had caused me great harm with her ignorance. She learnt that she had dealt Anne a blow she had no reason to (two blows, if you count the physical one). She found out eventually that she had shattered Jane's last ounce of hope that her actions towards Anne may have been in the slightest bit excusable. She discovered that she had been cold towards a child who was starved for affection.
But she didn't see those events as wrongs just yet. That night, when she locked her door behind her, she stared at the ceiling until her eyes closed of their own accord. That night, she only had words and thoughts for God. Mainly, three questions.
How had this happened? Why had he allowed it to? Was being here, in a house with all of the -in her opinion at the time, she regrets it to this day- whores who had seduced and corrupted her beloved Henry punishment for something?
A lot of feelings and thoughts remained behind closed doors that night, Mae. A lot of hurt and confusion that didn't see the light. Our pain would remain locked away for another while, my girl, because building a home out of six women whose only common denominator is an abusive ex-husband is no easy feat.
Now that you know how we came back, my sweetheart, it is time I tell you about how we became a family. To give you a heads up: with a lot of work, communication, and patience.
And a lot, a lot of determination from auntie Kitty.