Friday, December 20, 2013

Christmas Quotes: Henry and Anne

Every year Kelly and I run a Virtual Advent tour and as part of that I collect a number of Christmas themed quotes from my reading to share both at the tour blog and on my own blog. 

This week, at Historical Tapestry, we are celebrating Christmas with a few of these quotes. We hope that you enjoy our themed posts for this week.

We wish all of our readers a very happy and safe festive season.

The first quote comes from Wolf Halle, which I have been listening to on audio book and loving! I know, I am about 3 years behind every one else in reading this book but what can I say....better later than never! I won't be waiting 3 years to read the follow up book!

Of course, it features Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn!

At Whitehall - York Place, as it was - the builders are still in. For Christmas, the king had given Anne a bedroom. He led her to it himself, to see her gasp at the wall hangings, which were of cloth of silver and cloth of gold, the carved bed hung with crimson satin embroidered with images of flowers and children. Henry Norris had reported to him that Anne had failed to gasp; she had just looked around the room slowly, smiled, blinked. Then she had remembered what she ought to do; she pretended to feel faint at the honor, and it was only when she swayed and the king locked his arms around her that the gasp came. I do devoutly hope, Norris had said, that we shall all at least once in our lives cause a woman to utter that sound.

When Anne had expressed her thanks, kneeling, Henry had to leave, of course; to leave the shimmering room, trailing her by the hand, and go back to the New Year's Feast, to the public scrutiny of his expression: in the certainty that news of it would by conveyed all over Europe, by land and sea, in and out of cypher.

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