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the door to religious dissension in England.”
    “It did not. The heretics were already strong in England. History cannot fault that to me!”
    “Not as strong as they would become,” Culhane said almost apologetically. “Queen Mary was known as Bloody Mary for burning heretics who used the Act of Supremacy to break from— Your Grace! Are you all right…Anne?”
    “Do not touch me,” she said. Queen Mary. Then her own daughter Elizabeth had been disinherited, or killed…Had Henry become so warped that he would kill a child? His own child? Unless he had come to believe…
    She whispered, “Elizabeth?”
    Comprehension flooded his eye. “Oh. No, Anne! No! Mary ruled first, as the elder, but when she died heirless, Elizabeth was only twenty-five. Elizabeth became the greatest ruler England had ever known! She ruled for forty-four years, and under her England became a great power.”
    The greatest ruler. Her baby Elizabeth. Anne could feel her hands unknotting on the ugly artificial chair. Henry had not repudiated Elizabeth, nor had her killed. She had become the greatest ruler England had ever known.
    Culhane said, “This is why we thought it best not to tell you all this.”
    She said coldly, “I will be the judge of that.”
    “I’m sorry.” He sat stiffly, hands dangling awkwardly between his knees. He looked like a plowman, like that oaf Smeaton…She remembered what Henry had done, and rage returned.
    “I stood accused. With five men. With George. And the charges were false.” Something in his face changed. Anne faced him steadily. “Unless…were they false, Master Culhane? You who know so much of history. Does history say…” She could not finish. To beg for history’s judgment from a man like this… No humiliation had ever been greater. Not even the Spanish ambassador, referring to her as “the concubine,” had ever humiliated her so.
    Culhane said carefully, “History is silent on the subject, Your Grace. What your conduct was…would have been…is known only to you.”
    “As it should be. It was…would have been…mine,” she said viciously, mocking his tones perfectly. He looked at her like a wounded puppy, like that lout Smeaton when she had snubbed him. “Tell me this, Master Culhane. You have changed history as it would have been, you tell me. Will my daughter Elizabeth still become the greatest ruler England has ever seen—in my ‘time stream’? Or will that be altered, too, by your quest for peace at any cost?”
    “We don’t know. I explained to you… We can only watch your time stream now as it unfolds. It had only reached October 1533, which is why after analyzing our own history we—”
    “You have explained all that. It will be sixty years from now before you know if my daughter will still be great. Or if you have changed that as well by abducting me and ruining my life.”
    “Abducting! You were going to be killed! Accused, beheaded—”
    “And you have prevented that.” She rose, in a greater fury than ever she had been with Henry, with Wolsey, with anyone. “You have also robbed me of my remaining three years as surely as Henry would have robbed me of my old age. And you have mayhap robbed my daughter as well, as Henry sought to do with his Seymour-get prince. So what is the difference between you, Master Culhane, that you are a saint and Henry a villain? He held me in the Tower until my soul could be commended to God; you hold me here in this castle you say I can never leave, where time does not exist, and mayhap God neither. Who has done me the worse injury? Henry gave me the crown. You—all you and my Lord Brill have given me is a living death, and then given my daughter’s crown a danger and uncertainty that without you she would not have known! Who has done to Elizabeth and me the worse turn? And in the name of preventing war! You have made war upon me ! Get out, get out!”
    “Your—”
    “Get out! I never want to see you again! If I am in hell, let