Chapter 29 #3
“You know who I am,” Anne replied. She strode toward Lassells, her knife in hand.
His shock made him slow, and Anne had the blade at his throat before he could react.
She took the candle from his hand and blew it out, tossing the smoldering mass of wax and charred wick onto the floor.
There was just enough light from the moon and the embers of the fire for Anne to see, but the darkness made every movement, every sound more sinister, and she lowered her voice to a bone-chilling whisper.
“Do you take pleasure in destroying the life of a young girl?” she asked, sliding the silver knife along his jaw. “Does it make you feel like a bigger man to topple a woman who has more power than you?”
“I—you—” All Lassells could do was stammer, his eyes held captive by Anne’s rage.
“Do you care that your king has had a dozen of his own affairs? Does it bother you that he’s slept with married women or girls just past their first bleeding cycle? No, of course not. He is a man, and a king, and the rules don’t apply.”
“Anne,” came a warning voice behind her. “Men like him will never understand. They’ll never change.”
“You’re—you’re a spirit! An apparition!” Lassells had finally found his tongue. His words came out pitchy and cracked. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
“You could be dead.” Anne traced her knife along Lassells’s throat. It could have been a lover’s caress, if not for the thin line of red it left behind.
“That will only make a mess,” Lina advised. She had come to stand by Anne’s shoulder and gave Lassells an unimpressed once-over.
Anne noticed that Lina’s glamour had fallen too—she’d have to be more careful about that in the future. Lassells was trembling, and Anne was surprised by how much she could despise a man she’d only just met. His spinelessness disgusted her.
“We can’t let him testify against Kat,” Anne pointed out.
“No,” Lina agreed.
Lassells spat at them, gaining a shred of courage just big enough to bluster. “You can’t stop me! I am a man of God! The king will know the truth!”
Without warning, Lassells threw himself back against Anne, knocking them both to the floor.
Anne’s knife bit into her thumb as Lassells got his hands around her neck, squeezing so tight she feared she wouldn’t be able to get a curse past her throat.
For a moment, all was darkness and pain and fear.
Distantly, she saw Lina try to pull Lassells off.
“The queen will pay for her sins!” Lassells was shouting. “You all will!”
Even though Anne knew what she was about to do was unforgivable, she did it anyway.
The curse to break a man’s mind was surprisingly simple, for human minds were always on the verge of madness.
The words flowed off Anne’s tongue, the ire in them sharp enough to catch Lassells’s attention and make his hands ease around her neck.
He looked down at her just in time for Anne to brush her bloodied thumb against his forehead, and then he collapsed.
Anne did the same, for the curse was powerful, and Lassells had nearly wrung the life out of her.
“Are you all right?” Lina asked, pulling the younger woman to her feet and away from Lassells’s body.
She nodded. “Fine,” she replied, voice hoarse. Anne explored her neck with careful fingers, wincing when they found a sore spot. She would sport a necklace of bruises by morning.
“Dead?” Lina asked, gesturing toward the man’s prone form.
“Not exactly.” Anne nudged Lassells with her foot, and he stirred. A moment later he was sitting upright, babbling in a mixture of English and Latin, his eyes out of focus. “It’s straight to Bedlam with him.”
She said the words without feeling, but what Anne had just done, and done without hesitation, was the exact opposite of everything she had worked toward in Spain.
There, she had used her magick for good, for healing, to make sick and broken minds better.
With the flash of a blade and a few syllables, she had disregarded years of work.
Lina watched the man for a moment, and Anne wondered what her friend was thinking.
The elder queen had never favored Anne’s thirst for revenge, had always counseled steady progress and well-considered plans.
Anne’s curse could not be countered, or if it could, only by a witch of even greater training and power.
In the moonlight, Lina looked like a strange kind of angel, her silver hair aglow and her dress melting away into the shadows. Perhaps, Anne thought, this was what the Christians’ judgment angel looked like, weighing sins and souls at the end of the world.
“What’s done is done,” Lina finally said, and her words indeed felt like a divine pronouncement. She turned to look at Anne, eyes bright against the night. “And now, we must find a way to tell Kat she’s in terrible danger.”
Skip Notes
*1 This is why Anne makes one of the best and worst operatives for the Sisterhood.
*2 My friends shared a complicated history with Archbishop Cranmer.
It was Cranmer who had ruled against the legitimacy of Lina’s marriage to Henry, finding a useful biblical loophole in Leviticus about brothers and wives and nakedness.
(I’ve always found it terribly convenient that the Bible could be used to suit just about any argument and cover any crime.) This, of course, was advantageous to Anne and to our plans, at least for a time.