Chapter Twenty-One The Bull
Chapter Twenty-One
The Bull
For two days, Anne wandered through the woods, staying close to the River Great Ouse, careful not to get too near to any village or monastery, castle or manor.
“Follow the Great Ouse to the River Cam, then the Cam into Essex. When the Cam ends, head south until you reach London,” George had directed her.
“Be sure to walk so the mossy sides of the trees are facing you. In the morning the sun should be on your left, and in the afternoon on your right. ’Tis no short journey.
’Twould take a fit man three, perhaps four days’ time to reach London. ”
Some parts of the woods she knew, owned by lords she’d known at court, used by the king for hunting grounds.
Before the time of lords, she supposed these woods had been occupied by the Angles, and before that by the ancient tribes.
She’d learned their names while living with the Archduchess Margaret, but couldn’t recall which had occupied this territory, south of the fens but north of London.
Was it the Catuvellauni? The Corieltauvi?
To the east of London had lived the Trinovantes, and in Norfolk, her family’s ancestral land, had lived the Iceni, and their fierce queen Boudicca, burner of London, destroyer of Romans.
Oh, Margaret! She wished she could go back now, crawl into Margaret’s bed, like she’d done as a child when she’d woken from a bad dream, and have that good lady stroke her hair and tell her all was well, it was only a dream, nobody would ever execute a queen, nobody can rise from the dead.
Anne remembered her tutor in Mechelen well, a young monk who had at first been reluctant to heed Margaret’s direction that “her girls,” as she called the half dozen daughters of noble birth who’d been sent to her household for training in how to be a lady, be educated the same as any boy.
Anne might have thought that a younger man would be open to new ideas of girls’ education, as surely as he was open to the new ideas of science and art coming out of Florence and Venice.
Something she had always admired about Thomas Cromwell was that he had educated his daughters as well as his son, though of course what she’d taken for an openness to the intelligence of women had simply been a care for his own progeny.
He had not liked Anne’s intelligence. How could the same man who cared so dearly for the women in his own life dislike women writ large so much?
How could a man treat his own daughters with dignity and humanity, while insinuating that another man’s wife, his queen no less, ought to shut her mouth and open her legs, for she was no better than breeding stock and should get to it?
Cromwell was awash in such contradictions.
Eventually, the poor tutor at Mechelen had caved, persuaded by the archduchess’s stern lectures and an offer of more compensation.
“You’re as bright as you are pretty,” he’d said to Anne in a reptilian voice, when she’d mastered her Latin and French, when she’d read through the Roman histories, when she’d mastered mathematical equations.
What had she learned about the ancient peoples of England there, in the oak-paneled room in which the pupils gathered to study, trussed up in satin gowns, hair braided and pinned under French hoods?
That the pre-Roman tribes had been barbaric, but proud.
To a one they’d fought the Romans, though eventually all gave in. That some conducted ritual sacrifices.
Anne remembered years later, with Henry, stopping to visit the Earl of Shrewsbury at Sheffield Castle during one of their progresses—so far north, farther north than she was now.
The earl, an old favorite of Henry and his father before him, who’d stood stalwart beside Henry in the annulment proceedings, had brought out an ancient bowl, made of beaten metal.
Atop it sat a lid, and on the handle of the lid, a statuette of a flat-faced, long-nosed woman riding a bull.
In each hand she gripped one of the bull’s curved horns.
She straddled the beast, legs stuck straight out.
“This bowl,” drawled the earl, “was used by the ancient tribes. One of my tenants unearthed it while plowing. I had a scholar from King’s College verify that ’tis a relic, likely used to catch the blood of the condemned in ancient sacrifices.
” He’d eyed Anne flirtatiously. “My lady, does not your family crest bear the emblem of a bull? A play on your surname? Perhaps the feminine rider is one of your ancient ancestresses?”
“My Anne is a champion rider, but I have never seen her ride a bull,” Henry had said, jokingly, pulling her to him with enough affection that she forgave the earl for his suggestive comment and, for once, held her tongue.
Blood sacrifice, then. Wizards too. She remembered her tales of Arthur and Merlin.
Arthur, the aging king whose wife, Guinevere, left him for his friend the good knight Lancelot, and Merlin, the wizard who tricked and magicked the world around him so the prophesies he foresaw would come true.
She remembered the story of Brutus, grandson of Aeneas, sailing to English shores to found a race of peoples there.
She remembered learning of fairies and witches that haunted the woods, of Druid rituals, of a race of giants who once lived in England, of a race of little people who lived in the woods with such sharp hearing that no action could be plotted against them because they could hear every word uttered near and far.
’Twas all a lot of superstition, Anne thought, as she walked, a resurrected woman, among the oak and pine trees, following the paths trampled by deer or local children.
Anne wished she could have stayed in the fens with Alice. When George had paddled his boat away from the island the morning Anne left, Alice and the children, and even stout Ethel, stood waving by the dock, Alice wiping tears from her face.
“I have never seen my sister cry at a parting before,” George said as he and Anne rowed around a bend, out of view of the little hut.
“Certainly never at parting from her husband.” He peered into the swamp water, intently.
I wonder if he’s searching for eels, Anne thought.
“We know how Alice is,” he said. “That she has sometimes loved other women.”
Anne was afraid George would scold her, that perhaps he’d seen her and Alice asleep by the water that morning, held in each other’s arms, that perhaps he’d tell her that for two women to embrace like husband and wife was a sin.
“And we love her for who she is,” George said with startling directness. “I’d be happy to see her happy with you. I’d be happy to see her happy. If that’s why you’re leaving, you needn’t go. You could come and stay with us. You’d be welcome.”
Anne caught her breath. She’d spent the past ten years in England feeling disliked and unwanted by any number of people, first her fellow courtiers, then her subjects, at last her own husband.
Yet here was this man she’d just met, this woman she’d just met, opening their arms to her, their home to her, who liked her just as she was.
“No,” Anne said. “That is very kind of you. Thank you. But that’s not why I’m leaving.” Seeing George’s eyebrow arched in curiosity, she added, repeating her lie, “I have to find my daughter.”
“Yes,” he said, “your daughter.” He wiped the back of his hand across his brow, scratching some little itch there. “I don’t know who you are, but I can tell there’s something you’re keeping secret.”
“ ’Tis no secret. She’s in danger.”
George nodded at Anne skeptically. She doubted he fully believed her.
But he stopped questioning her. The two rowed on for a while before they spoke again.
They passed Witch Finger Woods, where the dead treetops shot through the surface of the water.
They passed reed patches and islands. The flooded sprawl of rivers began to narrow and obey, to look less like a bay filled with islands and more like a few distinct rivers, one of which they rowed down.
A flock of geese lifted off the water ahead of them, forming a loose V in the sky.
Anne marveled at the beauty of this place, at its untamed splendor.
“There’s rich men who would like to drain these fens,” George said, noticing her admiration for the riverscape around them.
“I know,” replied Anne. “I know those men. I know their plans. They’d like to use the land for grain fields and pastures. I’ve heard them discussing the matter.”
“The law doth punish man or woman that steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater felon loose that steals the common from the goose,” George recited. “ ’Tis a poem, spoken by common folk. I assume you’ve heard of poetry,” he said, smiling and winking at her.
“Yes,” replied Anne, for she had heard so much poetry in her life. She fingered her silk collar. “I am sorry,” she said to George. “I wish I could stop it.”
“Mmm,” he replied, close-lipped. He gazed back out at the water. “Of course.”
They’d rowed on, mostly in silence, until they came to a dock at the river. “Take care, good lady,” he’d said, as he helped Anne out of the boat. He kissed her on the cheek. “Know that you can always come back. We shall be here. I would treasure you like a second sister.”
She thought again of her own brother George, of how much she wished he were here. “Thank you,” she said, squeezing this other George’s arm with affection, before turning to walk away.
George had given her a bundle of food that Ethel had packed—a loaf of bread and some raw parsnips, a large slab of smoked fish—enough, Anne hoped, to tide her over for her journey.
“Remember my directions,” George had called after her, “and remember that you can always return.” Anne nodded in understanding and waved goodbye.
—
By the end of the first day, Anne had eaten half the food in her bundle and still felt weak.
She’d been ravenously hungry since reawakening in the arrow chest five days earlier, and yet despite eating as much as she could lay hands on, each day she felt more and more frail.
She worried that she’d suffer another fainting spell or fever, and this time, there’d be no Alice to assist her.
She made camp in a stand of birch trees, using what remained of her bundle of food as a pillow.
In the night she dreamed of a metal bowl overflowing with blood, and in the half-dark early dawn she awoke to a bull, standing over her, huffing into her startled, narrow face.