Chapter Twenty-Two The Sweat
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Sweat
Anne thought of the three bulls of her family crest, black fabric silhouettes against a white and red field.
She thought of the golden pinky ring George had worn with a bull’s head sculpted onto its face.
She thought of the bull she’d seen as a child, that had rampaged through the little village near Hever Castle, breaking in a peasant’s front door as though it had been invited into the small cottage, and wounding a child with a swipe of its pointed horn.
And though the child had lived, he’d lost an arm.
The bull had been slain by the village men, for the animal, though domesticated, had gone wild and needed to be killed to protect the villagers, to protect the livestock, to protect the children.
The village men had roasted the beast and Anne’s family had come out of the big castle to dine with them around a campfire, while the village women danced and sang, drunk on mead and full of roasted beef, and the little boy who’d lost his arm slept off his suffering in the village church, its doors guarded by his older brothers.
Where had this bull come from, standing above Anne, unmoving, observing her, huffing in her face?
For a moment, Anne worried he might gore her, as the buck-wild, angered bull had done to the village child so many years ago.
But she saw that the bull was calm, quiet, with placid black eyes that stood in contrast to his bone-white hide.
She reached a hand up to touch his muzzle, which was soft and velvety, like a horse’s.
Piercing his septum was a large golden ring.
She put her hand to the ring and pulled.
The bull took a step forward, though was careful not to step on her.
“Good boy,” Anne said. Then, “Are you fantastical?” She propped herself up on her elbow and dug in her bundle for one of the parsnips Ethel had packed.
She held it out for the bull, who lipped it off her palm and chewed it slowly.
The creature lifted a hoof and stomped the ground, impatiently, as though waiting for her to rise.
Over the bull’s pale shoulder, she could see Earendel, the morning star, shining on the horizon.
She supposed she’d woken into odder situations, and worse, such as every morning she’d woken at the Tower, the terror of her fate recurring to her, coming into her consciousness again, after a night of forgetful sleep.
The most terrible of which was the morning she’d woken early and watched her brother led to the scaffold from her chamber window, his little half wave, his sad smile.
Her George, her brother. A cry rose in her throat and hiccuped out of her.
The bull nudged her gently with his muzzle, as if to say, “Don’t cry, my lady.
” Or, maybe, “Don’t cry, Anne. Don’t cry, little bull.
Little Bullen.” How many times had George called her that?
For a while, Anne led the bull through the woods.
The beast followed her wherever she went, like a puppy, and it felt important to keep him with her.
The two walked along the river as the sun rose on her left, the bull stopping here and there to nibble on vegetation, Anne stopping to ladle river water to her mouth with her hand.
She was so thirsty. And hot. Had the fever returned?
She ate the rest of her bread as she walked.
She ate the rest of the smoked fish. Her appetite was bottomless.
Behind her, the bull let out weighty sigh after weighty sigh, as though wanting something from her that she could not give.
What? she wanted to ask him. What do you want?
But he was a bull, and she couldn’t expect him to answer her.
The way the bull followed her, the way he tilted his head when he looked at her, reminded Anne of her favorite lapdog, whose habit of inquisitively tilting his head had led to his name, Purkoy, a transliteration of pourquoi, French for “why.” And that was a good question.
Why? Why was she, the living dead, leading an alabaster bull through the woods?
Purkoy had fallen to his death from a window at Hampton Court Palace the year before.
When she found out about Purkoy’s death, she was sure he’d been pushed.
She assumed one of her ladies had done it, jealous of a flirtation Anne had had with her husband.
What a stupid thing to be jealous of. That was how it was supposed to go.
The men of court wrote Anne poems, gave her trinkets.
She was, after all, their queen, and this was the expectation of courtly behavior, of courtly love.
In return she flirted or gave small tokens of her affection, a kerchief embroidered with her initials, a silver-backed pocket mirror, a lock of her hair.
Everyone knew the queen didn’t actually sleep with her admirers.
She wasn’t the king, who was free to fuck any lord’s wife he pleased.
Different rules applied to her. Now she wondered if Henry had pushed the dog.
The thought had crossed her mind, for a moment, when Henry told her the dog had fallen to his death—had he pushed the little dog?
But surely, she’d thought, he couldn’t be that duplicitous.
He’d comforted her after Purkoy’s death, he’d consoled her.
He, too, had been devastated. Who could lie that well?
She’d been looking forward, in her own death, to seeing Purkoy again.
She knew pets weren’t supposed to have an afterlife.
Even so, she imagined her dog would be there to greet and comfort her after her beheading, to lap her fingers and lips and communicate, with the unconditional love of a dog, that all was well.
They were together again. Nothing could harm her now that she was, like her dog, dead.
She’d dreamed of running her hands through his long fur as she slept her last anxious nights at the Tower.
It would be her reward for getting through the awful business of the beheading.
After death, Purkoy would run to her, and she’d pick him up, nuzzle him, whisper, “Purkoy, mon chien, je t’adore.
” That she hadn’t found him after death was one more disappointment of this odd afterlife.
Why? Pourquoi? she wondered again. Why did she seem to be walking in circles, with a puppyish bull at her heels, going nowhere and going everywhere?
Leaving the fens and also returning to them?
Heading to London and also away? Riding to kill Henry and also to love him?
For in that stroke of death, she imagined a final expression of her love.
The death stroke would say “Enough,” would put the beast out of his misery, would keep safe those around him.
Like the blind bear in the arena in Southwark, like the crazed bull in the village of her childhood, Henry had grown dangerous in his injury and age.
“Enough,” her killing stroke would say, and it would be.
—
It had not always been this way. Anne remembered the year she’d left court, 1526, fuming over her canceled engagement to Henry Percy.
The marriage would have made her a countess, titled, with property, and a kind, doting man to husband her into her elevated status and wealth.
But Percy’s father wanted him to marry Mary Talbot, the daughter of an earl in her own right, a better match by rank, and Anne assumed that was why the betrothal had been called off, news she’d received in a curt letter written by Cardinal Wolsey, who had a hand in arranging the marriages of many courtiers, who no doubt had supported Percy’s father, pushed Percy to break the engagement off.
How she had ranted about the letter, that evening in the great hall, over supper, walking right up to Wolsey, pointing her finger at him, and saying, “If it lay ever in my power, I will work you much displeasure.” He’d looked back at her, disbelieving a lady-in-waiting, the daughter of a social-climbing nobleman without title, the sister of the king’s notoriously loose mistress, disbelieving a woman period, would speak to him that way, and had said, “Girl, mind your place,” and raised a hand, as though to strike her, but she’d lurched forward at him, and said, “Try it, old churl,” and he’d backed away.
All present in the room had looked at them, looked at, and then looked away from, this uncouth girl, this loudmouthed woman.
Didn’t she know women ought to be better behaved, ought to accept what was handed to them, ought not rant and rave at supper, making a spectacle of themselves?
Women ought not talk back to Cardinal Wolsey.
She’d retreated to the safety of Hever Castle, to her private rooms, where she spent hours lying in bed, watching the light that reflected off the castle moat dance across her chamber ceiling.
“Is all well?” her mother had inquired, looking concerned, as she checked in on her every few hours.
From the opened chamber door, Anne could hear the sound of Mary’s children playing, for Mary and her family visited frequently at the castle.
Then the letters from the king had begun to arrive, and the tokens, and she understood that he wanted her for himself, that he was the reason her engagement had been canceled, that he’d finished with her sister and now wanted a taste of her.