In Pacifica

In Pacifica I despise that portrait of me. The likeness ends with the name. Yes, Jane Seymour, unbeheaded Queen of England. No, not of pinched thin lips and sharp bird-beak nose. Those hideous wimples tented on over plucked foreheads displaying protruding toad eyes.... I was not the smoldering gypsy beauty of Anne Boleyn nor the loud, youthful excess of everything Katherine Howard but look what their beauty cost them: one head apiece. I was pretty in my watchful, rich-wombed way. I carried a King in my devoted belly and a great love for my cousin-husband, a fondness for estranged young Mary and a fervent wish for peace. I carried the scent of my beloved garden sweet forsythia nor the harlot’s stink of Paris and promiscuity. I was loathe to undergo a coronation I did not want to be Queen and yet here I am, the only wife to receive a queen’s funeral and share a tomb with the Beheader.