Chapter Sixteen The King May Perish. Hide.
Chapter Sixteen
The King May Perish. Hide.
In the morning, Anne groggily roused herself from the forest floor.
Forest? Could you call this spit of trees a forest?
Nearby, a brook trickled past. Lark song filled the air.
The long grass where the two women had slept was bent over, as though two deer had slumbered there.
That’s what anybody who saw this spot would conclude, Anne thought.
Of course, if the Tower guards had the hounds out, they wouldn’t be fooled.
They’d pick Anne’s scent up on the grass, dead or not.
Alice grumbled under her breath as she tried to pin her hair and cap back in place, scowling at Anne.
“If you have something to say to me, say it,” Anne said.
Alice remained silent.
“Well?” Anne demanded.
“Do you know what I dreamed of last night?” Alice asked.
“What?” Anne replied. She hated hearing about the dreams of others, which always bored her.
Other people’s dreams were about predictable things: flying, losing their teeth, a strange man in the woods.
Worst had been Lady Worcester, one of her ladies-in-waiting, whose dreams centered on her bungling husband’s debts, and involved his selling off her jewels to pay them.
How awful to dream so literally. Lord Worcester had indeed been in debt, due to his lack of skill at cards, and had indeed sold off Lady Worcester’s jewels.
Lady Worcester had begged Anne for loans so often that she’d lost count of how much she lent her.
Five hundred pounds? A thousand? More? Even with all those loans, all that assistance, Lady Worcester had testified against Anne at her trial, a series of lies spewing from her duplicitous, indebted mouth.
“I dreamed a wounded dog turned up at my door,” began Alice.
Good Lord, thought Anne, this dream is starting off dull indeed; if a wounded dog showed up at my door, I would kick it away.
“Not that I need another mouth to feed,” Alice continued, “but the dog was so sorrowful-looking that I took it in, and fed it, and bathed it. The dog spoke to me. It said, ‘I am a bitch who has been wronged, help me find my pup.’ It wore an odd silk collar. But when I left the dog alone to fetch wood for my fire, I returned to find not a dog but a wolf, and not a silk collar but a diamond one. I said, ‘Who are you?’ and the wolf growled and bit my arm, and ran off in the night, and where the wolf bit me, thorns grew that wept pus.”
“ ’Tis a strange dream,” said Anne, a bit nervous now at how intently Alice was looking at her.
“Who are you?” demanded Alice.
“I’ve already told you. I’m Lady Anne Brandon, the wife of Charles Brandon, friend of the king,” replied Anne, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I don’t believe you,” said Alice. “I think you’re the animal in my dream, pretending at being a wounded dog, when you’re actually a wolf.”
“ ’Twas just a dream, Alice,” said Anne. A breeze blew through the new leaves in the trees above, rattling them, sending a shiver down Anne’s spine.
“I heard the men calling after you from the Tower,” Alice said. “They were calling ‘Anne Boleyn,’ the name of the dead queen.”
Anne paused, thinking quickly of how to cover her lie. “That’s because I knew the queen, and she has just been beheaded. They were calling out to me with the news.”
“Do you even hear yourself? Do you think me stupid? That makes no sense,” Alice said. She pointed at Anne’s neck. “Why do you wear that silk collar? What’s under it?”
Anne put a hand to her throat. “Nothing,” she insisted.
“What are you hiding?” pressed Alice. The morning was growing brighter now, the sun rising in the sky like a shiny coin.
“What are you suggesting?” Anne replied. “That I’m the dead queen come back to life? That I reattached my own head and am fleeing across the country with a mouthy whore?”
Anne regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth. Alice looked at her with such spite. I have done it again, thought Anne. I have driven another person I care for to hate me. Alice drew back her hand and slapped Anne, hard, across the face. “You watch your mouth,” she spat.
Anne held a hand to her cheek. Tears slid down her face, from the pain of the slap, from the pain of Alice’s disdain.
Then she remembered who she was. She was the rightful queen of England, dead or not.
And Alice was a common prostitute, who had no right to speak to her like that, no right to strike her.
“No, you watch yours,” Anne said. “Are you simple, woman? Nobody can rise from the dead, except the good Lord Christ. Not me. Not you. Not even the king himself will be able to do so.” Anne took a step closer to Alice.
“And you should watch how you speak to your betters. After all, you are a woman of inferior status.”
In the distance, the clop of horses’ hooves, the turn of wheels on the packed dirt road. A carriage was nearing.
“Something is off with you, with your story,” Alice said, looking at her skeptically. “But I’ll help you because I’m a good Christian woman.”
Anne laughed.
“Is something funny about that?” Alice demanded.
“You think it’s so easy to live a pious life when you don’t have two pence to rub together?
When you’re born into poverty, and the monastery or some landlord owns the land your people have lived on for generations?
I’m no different than you, except that chance made you the daughter of a lord, and me the daughter of a fisherman.
I’d like to put you in my position and see what choices you’d have made.
And,” Alice continued, “for one so high and mighty, you certainly don’t mind wearing the clothes I paid for on my back, or eating my food, or seeking the protection I’ve learned to provide myself thanks to many working nights.
The world is not all pageants and parties and church and charity, my lady. ”
Anne tried to interject but Alice pushed forward.
“Some of us,” Alice said, her voice rising in volume and pitch, “have had to work for our suppers. Something you noble folk know nothing about. I’ve done nothing but help you, and in return, you’ve done nothing but take advantage of me.
Insult me. Lie to me. I’ll help you get to the fens, but when we arrive, you’re on your own.
” Alice shook her head. “ ‘Inferior.’ I’m not inferior.
If anything, you and your ilk, dining in your castles while the common folk suffer and starve, are inferior, because you lack the wits to see how your wealth, how your ease, is pried from the hands of the very ‘inferior’ people you disdain. ”
The sound of the carriage drew closer.
“Alice,” Anne started. “I—”
“Come,” Alice interrupted, “we need to catch the carriage. Make haste, and keep your ignorant head down.”
Anne followed Alice out of the stand of trees and up the road, her face still stinging from the slap.
What a woeful wretch, Anne thought, talking to her betters like that.
But at the same time, she wondered if Alice was right.
Was she a wolf pretending to be a dog? Was she the noble lady throwing parties while the peasants suffered?
Surely she had earned her status, or some ancestor had.
She was entitled to it. It was hers, like the jewels that pressed against her breasts inside her bodice, which she had earned by marrying the king, by bearing his child, by visiting upon him her womanly affections, by being his wife.
And she had been a good woman, had given to charity, had tried to direct the funds from the suppressed monasteries into universities and hospitals.
She had given alms. She had pushed England out of the arms of the Catholic Church, so its people could be free of the greedy priests.
So they would not have to pay for pardons, pay to get into heaven, give their money to debauched monks who spent it on wine and women.
She had done all this for the common people, like Alice. Was it not what they wanted?
—
The carriage ride to Bishop’s Lynn was bumpy and long.
Anne sat between Alice and an old woman, who kept her needlework on her lap for the entirety of the journey, even when her head slumped forward against her chest in sleep.
Across from them sat a mother with two girls, busy playing with rag dolls.
When Anne and Alice climbed into the carriage, the younger one said, “Mama, she looks mean. Is she a witch?” and Anne realized the scowl she wore, from her fight with Alice, and tried to force a smile for the child, but it must have looked more like a grimace, for the girl hid behind her mother’s arm.
Beside her, Alice mumbled, “Indeed, wouldn’t I like to know?
” and Anne longed to be back at court, a team of servants who knew better than to talk back to her helping her don a fine gown, draping her with jewelry, pinning her French hood in place just so.
Adorned thusly, Anne, the most happy, would be ready to entertain.
Instead, she rode in a cramped carriage in a borrowed gown next to the angry prostitute who’d lent it to her.
Anne recognized the woods they rode through.
The land belonged to the Earl of Essex, Henry’s second cousin and a former counselor to his father—an old man she and Henry had dined with once, while his wife gave her insufferable looks and crossed herself heavily before the meal, uttering her Catholic blessing in Latin, a papist devoted to the old queen, who wasn’t a queen at all. Not like Anne, the true queen.