Chapter Twenty The Most Happy
Chapter Twenty
The Most Happy
Anne heard Alice follow her out of the hut. By now she was bent at the waist, hands on her sides, breathing rapidly.
“My lady, are you well?” Alice asked, concern in her voice. “ ’Twas just a story.”
Anne turned toward her. Alice, with her fox-red hair, with her eyes like the good blue of the sky.
“I had to leave,” said Anne. “To get some air.” She tried, and failed, to slow her breathing. In the woods an owl sang out mournfully.
Alice walked closer to her and took her hand. The coolness of Alice’s fingers felt good. “Breathe, my lady,” she directed. “Take in one long breath. Now hold it for a moment. Let it go slowly.”
Anne did as Alice directed. She took in a long breath, held it, and released it. The hammering of her heart lessened. She took in another long breath, held and released it. Again. And again. Alice held both her hands now. Her breathing slowed and evened out.
“What is going on?” Alice asked. The two women’s faces were inches apart. “Who are you?”
“I told you,” Anne said. “I’m Lady Anne Brandon, wife of Charles Brandon, friend of the king. I have been treated poorly by my husband.”
Alice moved a hand to Anne’s cheek and stroked it gently. “No,” she said. “I saw how you started at the story Ethel told, when she spoke of the girl beheading the fox. I saw how the color left you. Who are you?”
“I told you.” Anne looked down. Tears welled in her eyes.
Alice tipped Anne’s chin up, softly, so their gazes met. “No,” Alice said.
“I told you,” Anne whispered, scarcely audible.
“No. Something you are telling me is not true. You are no Lady Brandon.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What’s beneath your collar?” Alice moved her fingers to Anne’s neck, resting them on the silk cloth that had once swaddled the babe Elizabeth. She tugged at it.
“Don’t,” said Anne. She tried to pull away, but Alice stopped her. She pulled Anne toward her, held her at the waist.
“Tell me,” Alice whispered. “You come from nowhere, dressed oddly, with a tragic story.” She paused.
“One night after the queen’s execution, you appear wearing a hastily made collar, spinning a yarn of a man who almost killed you, of the woman he’s left you for, of the daughter you’ve left behind.
These details. The match is uncanny. I’m a common woman, my lady, but I’m no fool. Who are you?”
“I’m Lady Bran—”
“No.”
“I’m La—”
“No.”
“You tell me then,” Anne said. “Who do you think I am?”
“You know.”
“Say it, then.”
“My lady,” said Alice, tugging again at the silk collar. “Take this off.”
“I cannot. ’Tis sewn together.”
Alice took her hand away from the collar, hiked her skirt, and withdrew a small blade from her boot. “May I?” she asked.
Anne nodded. Alice slid the collar around Anne’s neck until its seam faced her.
With her little knife, she popped each stitch, until the collar hung by just one thread.
Alice put the blade in her mouth and, with both hands, pulled the collar apart.
At the sight of the scar, she exclaimed, “Oh!” and the knife fell to the ground.
“No,” Anne said, covering her face in embarrassment and turning away.
She could only imagine what she looked like, what the scar looked like, the horror of her disfigurement.
Gently, Alice ran a finger over the scar.
What she must see, Anne thought, is a monstrosity, a thick, fleshy rope encircling my neck.
“My lady,” Alice whispered.
Anne brought her own fingers to the scar and felt its bulge, the evidence of all her failures, branded on her skin.
With the collar on, she’d been able to deny the reality of her execution.
She’d been able to pretend. With it off, all she could think of was her own shortcomings, her failure to endear herself to the manners-bound English courtiers, her failure to see the conspiracy against her coming until it was too late, her failure to best Thomas Cromwell, her failure to keep Henry’s wandering attention, her failure to just shut up, just shut up already, to shut her own mouth for her own fucking good, her failure to prove her innocence at trial, her failure to live and keep Elizabeth safe.
Anne sobbed, and the sobs were deep and guttural.
She felt Alice put a hand on her heaving back, brush the stray strands of hair from the nape of her neck.
“Shhhhh,” Alice said. Anne tried to stop her sobs, her chest and back catching as she pulled in long breaths.
She felt Alice’s breath against her neck, and Alice’s lips against her scar, as Alice kissed the thick band of tissue, hesitantly at first, and then in a series of soft, fluttery kisses.
“My lady,” Alice whispered in Anne’s ear. Then, “My queen?” Anne turned toward Alice, her face streaked with tears, a line of snot running from her nose.
With the sleeve of her gown, Alice wiped Anne’s face clean. She wiped her ruddy cheeks. She wiped her sniffling nose. “That is who you are, isn’t it?” Alice said. “You are the dead queen, Anne Boleyn.”
Anne let out another sharp sob. “Yes,” she said. What use was it to keep lying?
Alice pulled her closer, into a tight embrace.
Their faces almost touching, Alice held Anne’s gaze, then she kissed her, and in that kiss Anne, for a moment, forgot.
She forgot the shame of her failures. She forgot the fear of walking to the scaffold, the way she’d had to force one foot before the other, the way the heels of her slippers had tapped across the wooden stage.
She forgot the meek speech she’d made with her final living breaths—it had been necessary, for Elizabeth’s sake, and yet part of her wished she could go back in time and rip those supplicating words out of her mouth, and say what she wanted, speak her rage in a barbed retort.
She forgot the pain of her beheading, the pain of the sharp sword.
She breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of Alice—water lilies and the saltiness of sweat—and kissed her in return.
—
When the two women parted,they sat at the water’s edge. “Wait,” said Anne, giggling a little and thinking of the fairy tale Ethel had told. “Perhaps we shouldn’t sit by the water’s edge; I hope no wicked sisters come and drown us.”
“You’ve already been brought back to life once, my lady,” Alice replied, taking Anne’s hand in her own. “I don’t think you need to worry.”
Anne nodded again. She supposed Alice was right.
“How did this happen?” asked Alice. “How are you here, living and breathing?” She touched Anne’s scar. “How did this heal?”
“I don’t know,” said Anne. “I was on the scaffold, praying, waiting for the executioner’s swing.
And I do remember the pain of that, of the sword—a pain like fire and ice.
Then some time passed in darkness, and I woke in a wooden chest. An arrow chest, if you’d believe it.
The stingy fucker didn’t even have the decency to pay for a coffin.
I fled, carrying my head, stole a boat, and landed across the river in Southwark.
I stole a sewing basket from a tavern keeper’s wife, sewed my head back on, and fashioned this collar from my daughter’s silk swaddling cloth, which I’d hidden in my bodice, so that I could be close to her, so that I might take something of her with me to the grave.
” Anne held up the silken collar, dear treasure, remnant of Elizabeth, which she’d picked up from the ground where Alice had dropped it.
Alice stared at her, transfixed. “I don’t know how this happened.
I don’t know how I lived. I don’t know how a simple thread held my head back on, or how the wound healed.
I don’t know why I’m here.” Anne started to cry again.
“ ’Tis a miracle,” Alice said, stroking the back of Anne’s hand, pausing to trace a circle around a mole at her wrist.
“Maybe,” said Anne, shrugging. “I wouldn’t know.”
“My lady,” Alice said, shaking Anne’s knee to get her attention. “Yes. ’Tis a miracle. A miracle.”
Anne looked at Alice. “Or I am damned. Doomed for my sins to walk the earth in living death for all eternity.”
“My lady,” said Alice, “you can make anything glum. I thought you were supposed to be ‘the most happy’? That’s what all the criers said when you were made queen.
‘Hear ye, hear ye!’ ” shouted Alice, in imitation of a royal crier.
“ ‘Queen Anne Boleyn is crowned! The most happy!’ And they were singing that song, about a white bird?”
Anne remembered. “The White Falcon.” Henry had the song composed in honor of her coronation.
It was an atrocious song, rhyming “gentle bird” with “white as curd.” The falcon was one of Anne’s emblems, meant to represent steadfastness.
The song was clear about Anne’s duty, exhorting the falcon to “build a nest” and “bring fruit.” Though of course a gyrfalcon could do more than breed; the large females of the species could stalk and hunt, could kill.
The two women talked for hours, sharing their lives and stories.
Where was the father of Alice’s children?
Anne asked. Alice didn’t want to talk about it, but then revealed the father had been a man she’d wedded for her family’s sake, a man her father owed a debt to.
The man was mean, and old enough to be Alice’s father.
When he’d drowned cleaning out eel traps three years ago, Alice hadn’t shed a tear, hadn’t even bothered to send George after his body, which, Alice supposed, was now sunk to the bottom of the fen, joining the legion of other poor souls whose remains rested there.
Good riddance, thought Alice, and she set about her own business, heading into Southwark a few times a year to make some money at the brothel and spending the rest of her time at her father’s house, where she lived now, with her children and George, her brother.