Chapter Ten Like a Swan-Man, He Dove
Chapter Ten
Like a Swan-Man, He Dove
London Bridge felt more like a busy street than a bridge, Anne thought as she followed Alice onto London’s great architectural feat, its great connector of north and south, pumping people and commerce into and out of the city.
Buildings lined both sides of the bridge, each sharing a wall with its neighbor, so that no gaps existed between them.
Shops populated the ground floors, and living quarters the first and second stories, which cantilevered toward the center of the bridge’s thoroughfare, so that the sky, in places, was scarcely visible.
In this way, walking across the bridge felt very much like walking through a crowded tunnel.
Merchants, tradesmen, pilgrims, the servants of nobility, middling wives, all moved in and out of the crowds, in and out of the shops—a mix of haberdasheries, glovers, other makers of refined goods, and grocers.
“Let’s stop here and get something to eat,” Alice said, looking back over her shoulder at Anne, who perpetually lagged behind her in the crowd, and gesturing toward a pie shop. “Catch up with me, will you?”
Anne hurried to match Alice’s stride.
“I don’t know why you’re trailing me like a duckling,” Alice said, sounding bemused. “You’re the lady, after all, aren’t you? Shouldn’t I be walking five paces behind you?”
Anne smiled. It was a good question. She didn’t know what it was about Alice that made her seem worth following, but there was something—the way she carried herself, her slender build and the wisps of hair peeking out beneath her plain cap, the smile that came so quickly to her face when she was amused.
She was magnetic. A shyness, unusual for Anne, crept over her.
“Come,” said Alice, and the two ducked into the pie shop, where they ordered meat pies.
Anne pulled two pence from her bodice to pay the pieman, a squat, balding, middle-aged man missing half his teeth.
Near the counter sat a basket of fresh strawberries.
Under their feet, under the floorboards, under the stonework of the bridge, the Thames flowed past, but Anne didn’t notice.
“Can we have a handful of those fresh berries, as well?” Anne inquired.
“Yes, madam,” replied the pieman.
“Odd to see strawberries so early in the season, isn’t it?” Anne asked.
“Yes, madam,” said the pieman, looking up now and catching her eye.
One of his eyes, Anne noticed, was blue and the other brown.
“They’ve been driven up by cart from Brighton, though even there ’tis an early season.
There’s a gardener there who grows the berries in a glass house. ’Tis how he gets the fruit so early.”
Anne took a handful of the berries, which she split with Alice, who bit into one immediately, holding the green stem between her fingers. “Delicious,” she said, licking a bit of juice off her lip.
“They say the queen herself asked for strawberries for her last meal,” the pieman added, smiling at Anne coyly. “ ’Tis the food of royals.” Was he flirting with her?
“I don’t believe that,” said Anne. Her last meal had been communion bread and wine, delivered to her by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, shortly after her last confession, which did not include a confession to any of the misdeeds for which she was convicted and executed, but did include a confession to thinking hateful thoughts about the king, about Cromwell, and about simple Jane Seymour.
The pieman cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Wonderful,” said Alice, taking another bite of her strawberry. “You don’t get food like this in the fens.”
“Aye, ’tis true, you won’t find berries like this in the north,” said the pieman, chuckling and at ease again, and he and Alice continued chatting.
Anne made her way to the back of the shop to look out the window.
She’d almost forgotten they were on the bridge, but water rushed below in white-capped tumults.
Anne put her hand against the wall to steady herself.
“ ’Tis because we’re near a starling, madam,” said the pieman, suddenly beside her, his voice too close.
“What?” asked Anne.
The pieman leaned against the wall. “One of the bulwarks of the bridge. The shop’s built over it.
That’s why the water breaks and rushes so.
Its current is broken by the stone leg.” He looked her up and down, scratched the side of his nose with a dirty finger.
“Are you well, madam? Do you need to sit down?”
Anne smiled at him warily. Something about his demeanor, the familiarity he assumed, unsettled her. “No,” she replied.
“That’s a peculiar collar you’re wearing,” said the man, pointing to Anne’s neck.
In this light, the difference in color between his two eyes was more pronounced.
The blue eye caught the light off the water, making it paler, colder, and the brown eye looked yellowish, almost vulpine.
Anne imagined, for a moment, the man as a fox, badgering a mouse into a corner of the night forest.
“Come, Anne, let’s go,” said Alice, forcefully, from the front of the shop, breaking Anne’s focus on the rushing water, on the pieman’s animal eyes. Anne looked at her and saw an urgency in the set of her jaw, in the arch of her right eyebrow.
“Yes,” Anne replied, “we really must.” She smiled again at the pieman, whose hand, she saw, now rested on the window ledge, inches from her own. “Good day, sir.”
—
Outside the shop, the two women ate their pies and berries as they kept pace with the slow-moving crowd.
Anne was used to sitting at a fine table to eat.
Even in the Tower she’d had plates and cutlery, a warm fire, a pitcher of wine.
Did Alice often eat like this, on the move, no time to sit down and savor or enjoy?
Anne’s mind stayed on the pieman, his unnerving closeness, the greediness in his eyes, and on the churning water.
“It must be wearying to live on the bridge,” she said.
“I suppose you get used to it,” Alice replied, her mouth half full of pie.
“I don’t know if I could,” said Anne. A cross woman pushed past them, holding a child by his ear while she muttered under her breath, parting the crowd momentarily, before it closed back in on itself.
“Bridge people become bridge people,” Alice said.
“They spend most of their lives here. These people, like the pieman, rarely leave. Their children are born here, some die here.” Alice nodded to the cantilevered living quarters that arched above them.
Most had their shutters closed. “ ’Tis a lonely life, defined by water.
They make their living from fear of the river, from those too scared to cross by boat.
As they say, ‘Wise men go over London Bridge, only fools go under.’ ” Alice paused and gave Anne a wily look.
“Even their privies empty into the river.”
Anne chuckled. “You can’t be serious.” Though Anne knew she must be, for hadn’t the garderobes at the Tower, even at Hever Castle, emptied into the moats?
The moat at the Tower was flushed out by the tides of the Thames, to which it was connected, twice a day.
The moat at Hever was cleaned only by rainwater, and all knew not to touch the moat water, which in the dryer months stank.
Anne also knew that the water between the bridge’s last set of starlings, nearest to London, was placid and calm, and that no buildings had been constructed over that portion of the bridge, so that it could be used for royal barges to pass through, riding the currents up- or downriver as the tides turned.
She’d done it herself many times. And yet, she played along, pretending to be surprised.
“I am!” insisted Alice. “They build their privies off the backs of their houses, and any business you do there travels through a pipe and falls directly into the river.”
“Well, I shall be glad we’re not taking a boat under the bridge, then,” said Anne, “for I would not want to be tossed through the currents and covered in shit.”
Alice laughed. “Ah! So the lady has a sense of humor!”
“Yes,” replied Anne, glad that she’d pleased Alice, “I strive for happiness and delight.” And that was true, and had been true.
Anne, the most happy, up late playing cards with courtiers, up early for a ride or a hunt with Henry, always up for one of his quick rough fucks.
Anne, up for anything. Anne, there to amuse.
Anne, the humorous. Anne, the bold. Anne, the brazen-tongued.
Anne, up for merriment, even as she suffered miscarriage after miscarriage, even as she was filled with sorrow from the losses.
She’d worn herself down doing this, pretending to be joyful through her misery, going and going.
She’d grown exhausted, thin. Not that Henry had noticed, or if he had, he’d been annoyed, not concerned.
Still, it felt good to make Alice laugh. It felt good to be happy.
The women walked on, settling in behind a man coaxing a hog with a long rod.
Their pace was halting, hardly more than a shuffle.
The narrowness of the bridge caused the crowd to walk shoulder to shoulder, prevented the two women from quickening their pace and walking around those moving slower than they’d have liked to.
They couldn’t have been more than a third of the way across.
Anne was glad she had her money hidden in her bodice and not loose in a purse.
It would be easy to pick someone’s pocket in this crowd.
She noticed that Alice had wound the strings of her small purse twice around her wrist and clutched the purse itself in her tight fist, to prevent its theft.
“There’s a story,” Alice said, “of a bridge-dwelling man whose young daughter fell from a window of his house into the river last summer.”
“Really?” Anne thought of the terror the child must have felt.