"I could bear it [the shame] because I knew the truth, child," I say. "There was one of us in that marriage who was old, fat, and smelly, and it wasn't me." "The King was cruel to speak thus," Alice says, but in a low voice. As if Henry, dead these past ten years, might somehow hear her. "He was, yes," I say. "But I think mostly he was afraid." Alice is sceptical. "Kings are afraid of nothing," she says. "This King was afraid. I know it, for I'm the one who made him so. I made a mistake, child, a grave one." "What was it?" "I made my face a mirror when it should've been a mask, and what the King saw there terrified him. He hated me for it, and never, ever forgave me." [Anna of Cleves]"