Chapter Twenty-Three The Encampment
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Encampment
Hoping to hide herself, Anne ducked back behind the tree’s broad trunk.
The bull, dumb stubborn animal, stood his ground, huffing and pawing his hoof through the dirt.
She knew bulls took this stance when threatened, yet this bull, with his moon-white hide, had followed her so gently all day that his aggression surprised her.
The bull raked the ground and bent his head down, horns pointed forward.
Was he protecting her? Anne paused. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be involved with a powerful creature who was kind to her but aggressive with others.
After all, this was how Henry had seemed, tame initially but ultimately untamable, self-interested, head down, horns forward, ready and willing to gore friends, allies, religious counselors, his own wife, whoever she be, if she stood in his way.
There had even been a time when Anne had thought he’d execute his own daughter, Mary, for failing to sign the Act of Succession, recognizing Henry as head of England’s churches.
Here, Anne had been a reluctant advocate, a stepmother, finally, not just in name but in deed, lobbying on that angry fist of a girl’s behalf, for though she did not love Mary, though she found her impudent and entitled, though the girl reminded Anne that Henry had not always been hers, that hers was not the only or first family the king had had, still she did not wish to see the child lose her head, and she did not wish to see her Henry do the reaping.
The bull huffed again, his head down. Anne put a hand on his haunch, to calm him, perhaps, but also so she could give the beast a slap and send him charging if these river men proved treacherous.
“Who comes there?” shouted one of the encamped men.
“ ’Tis a bull!” cried a second.
And a third added, “He’s going to charge!” The bull tensed his muscles. Anne stood, hidden by the tree, hand on the beast’s buttock.
“Nay,” said the first man, “this beast is only posturing. Look how it raises its head to look at us.” This man must be the leader, Anne thought, for he bosses the others.
“Simon, you fool,” replied the second. “What would you know of bulls and goring? We all know you grew up in the city, scrubbing pots in a rich man’s kitchen. The most you’ve seen of a bull is its tail, chopped off and simmering in a stew.” The men around the fire laughed.
“Don’t you tell me my business,” replied the first man, Simon. “I swore I saw a maid beside the beast.” Anne pressed her back more firmly against the tree, wishing she could, by mere pressure, urge it to absorb her.
“Aye,” added a new voice, “I also saw her. ’Twas a thin pale woman with dark hair. ’Tis likely she’s a ghost. These woods are haunted by all manner of spirits, and fairies too.”
“Oh, shush up, you superstitious fool,” replied Simon.
“What, do you think the ghost of some sad woman roams these woods looking for encampments of down-on-their-luck men? Or maybe you think ’tis the ghost of fair Guinevere, mistaking us all for Knights of the Round Table, come back to shower us in queenly affection? ”
“No need to be vulgar, Simon,” replied the second man. Anne could hear men moving around the campfire, perhaps a scuffle in the works. Beside her, the bull huffed, head down, horns forward.
“I’d always thought of myself as more of an Arthur,” said the man who’d mentioned ghosts, “kingly as I am.”
The men around the fire laughed again. Anne peeked around the side of the tree and saw the man who had just spoken taking a regal bow, pretending to be king.
“There! I spy her!” cried one of the campers. The men turned and a few took a step in her direction. There was no use hiding. Anne stepped out from behind the tree. She kept her hand on the bull’s backside, ready to strike.
“Halt!” she called out, summoning up her most authoritative voice, though she feared it sounded weak and reedy, hungry and tired as she was, and thirsty, and with the hoarseness that had clung to it since her execution.
“Don’t come another step closer, or I’ll set my beast on you!
” She raised her hand up from the bull’s backside and held it in place, ready to smack.
“ ’Tis a woman!” called out a camper.
“Whoa, whoa, my good lady,” Simon cautioned, and she saw he was the stoutest of the men, short but powerfully built. He held his hands out in front of him. “We mean no harm.”
“How do I know that?” replied Anne. “You come upon me in the woods, a band of men, drinking and carousing. What am I supposed to think?” She raised her hand behind the bull, the threat of her slap visible to all the encamped men.
“Don’t think I won’t do it,” she added, through gritted teeth. “Stay where you are.”
“My lady,” Simon said, “ ’twas you who came upon us.”
“Are you lost?” called out one of the men. He was tall and thin, with a goodly smile.
“Are you a spirit?” called out the man who’d spoken of ghosts. He wore a friar’s habit.
And the man nearest the fire, who was turning the large pike on the spit, asked, “Would you like something to eat?” The fat from the fish popped and crackled as it dripped in the fire. She could smell the roasting flesh. She was famished. She set her hand down gently on the bull’s backside.
“I would,” she replied.
“You can dine with us, fair lady,” said the cook. “We won’t bother you. For don’t we all have mothers and sisters, and some of us daughters? We know better than to take advantage of a lost woman in the woods. We may not be gentlemen, but we are gentle in our ways.”
“Why are you camped here in the woods?” Anne demanded, her hand still resting on the bull’s backside. “These woods aren’t yours to camp in. Haven’t you homes to return to?”
“My lady,” replied Simon, “have you not heard of encamped men, who wander the woods and live off the land? We have no money to pay our rent, no crops to harvest, no hearth to call home. ’Tis nature not the right of every man?
We live here, off the land, and move from place to place, collecting what we can along the way. ”
“You’re thieves then,” said Anne, raising her hand above the bull’s backside again, ready to strike. She’d heard of bands of men who took to the woods and robbed nobles as they rode through, kidnapping their women and children, holding them for ransoms, sometimes defiling them.
“Aye, yes,” Simon answered, “but you needn’t fear us.
We won’t hurt you, my lady. We only take from those that can spare it, and we don’t kidnap or touch a woman in a way she doesn’t want.
We can see that you’re lost, and hungry.
You can dine with us. You can tie your bull up yonder.
” He nodded to a tree by their encampment.
“The bull stays with me,” Anne replied. Her stomach cramped with hunger.
If she didn’t eat, she wasn’t sure she’d make it back to London.
These men seemed scurrilous and were of low class, but how often had Anne been wrong about men in the past?
How often had she credited noblemen with more gentleness than they possessed?
Perhaps these men truly were charitable.
“I’ll join you,” she said, stepping forward and grabbing the bull by the ring in his nose.
“But,” she added, “if you try anything, anything, untoward, I shall set my beast on you all.” The men looked at each other.
Anne could see the worry in their faces.
“He is powerfully strong, and has gored many,” she embellished. “He’ll do whatever I command him to.”
Simon bowed. “As you would have it, madam. Here is a place where you can sit and dine, and your bull can stand beside you,” he said, gesturing to a flat rock next to the fire.
Anne walked toward the rock, the bull following her obediently. “Does he have a name?” asked one of the campers. Like all the men here, he wore shabby, threadbare clothes. He clutched a small cap in his hands, which he must have doffed in deference to having a woman in his presence.
Anne considered what name she could give the beast. “Zeus,” she replied, for hadn’t that been Europa’s white bull, a god disguised as a beast?
“Ah,” said the man. “And are ye Europa?”
“What was that?” Anne asked, sure she’d misheard him.
“Like the myth,” the man continued. “ ’Tis a story my good mother, God rest her soul, used to tell around the hearth at night: the god who transformed himself into a beast to steal away the woman he admired from beneath her father’s nose.”
“Your mother must have been an educated woman,” Anne said.
“Aye, she was,” the man said, looking away from her as he spoke.
“She served in the house of a noble lady, who taught her many a tale and legend, but then that good lady died in the birthing bed, and my mother came home to us. She wasn’t able to find work again, and we grew even poorer, though she shared with us the stories she’d learned in that rich woman’s house, until she died herself some years later. ” The man quieted, suddenly bashful.
“Oh, my condolences,” Anne said, feeling bad for the man and his woeful tale.
She settled herself upon the flat rock. The cook cut a slab of meat off the fish, put it on a scrap of fabric, and carried it to her. She took it gratefully. “My lady,” he said, ducking his head as he walked backward away from her.
How odd, Anne thought, that these men approach me with courtly manners.
And for a moment she thought that maybe they were the lost knights of Arthur’s round table, of Camelot, and maybe she was Queen Guinevere, returned to rule them in glory in the absence of her husband and her courtly lover: a woman ready to take the reins of power into her own hands and lead a people into greatness.
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