Chapter Twenty-Five The Sword
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Sword
“Good boy,” Anne said to the bull as she dismounted and patted his back. Then, remembering the name she’d called him at the campsite, she said, “Good boy, Zeus.”
The creature huffed in response and bowed his head.
In her hand, she clutched Elizabeth’s swaddling cloth that Simon had ripped off her neck.
She wished she could hold Elizabeth now, shelter her from whatever cruelties were brewing at court.
She examined the cloth. There were a few threads left in the fabric—some from when she’d sewn it on by the Thames, some from when Ethel had mended it in the fens—that looked long enough to tie together.
She wrapped the soft cloth around her neck—a comfort, already—and, with some effort, tied three sets of knots that she hoped would hold it in place.
“Are you thirsty, boy?” Anne asked. The bull turned his placid eyes on her—could this be the same wild beast that slew a man just hours before?—then wandered over to the pond and drank freely.
Anne looked around, trying to figure out where she was.
How far had she and the bull traveled? She wasn’t sure.
She was still near the river. As they’d bounded through the forest, she’d kept the river to their right side, traveling south, just as George had directed when he’d ferried her out of the fens.
She wondered what Alice was doing, and whether she’d found the gems Anne had hidden in her boots, and what reaction she’d had to them.
She imagined Alice shaking her head at the generous gift.
“Too much,” Alice might think. But then, Anne thought, Alice might hold the gems to her chest and whisper a word of thanks.
Anne liked to think of that, of Alice happy, of Alice thinking of her. She wished Alice were with her now.
Anne was startled from her thoughts by a loud bellow.
The bull had raised his head from the water, having drunk his fill, and was gazing into the middle of the pond intently.
He let out a second cry, as though he were calling to something stranded there.
“Shhhhh,” she said, trying to quiet him, lest his loudness draw another gang of murderous peasants to them.
She shielded her eyes from the sun and gazed into the pond.
Something glinted in the water. At first, Anne thought it might be a fish, though it appeared to be unmoving.
Not a fish then; probably some piece of trash.
Even so, she was curious. The water didn’t look deep.
Anne thought she could wade out to the shining object and investigate it further.
It could be something she could put to use.
Anne sat beside the bull and slid off her slippers.
Their ornate embroidery was barely visible beneath the layers of river and fen muck, dust from the journey through the forest, and, under all that, Anne’s own blood.
She set the soiled slippers aside, then peeled off her red stockings, untying them from the garters she wore on her thighs.
She’d chosen red, the color of the martyr, because she knew her stockings, and the red kirtle that matched them, would be visible when she kneeled on the scaffold at her execution.
And hadn’t she, reformer of a corrupt church, redistributor of ill-begotten church wealth to the poor, been executed as much for her religious ideals as for anything else?
The very definition of martyrdom. She laid her stockings atop her slippers.
Finally, she untied and removed the summer cloak.
Standing, Anne hoisted her smock, kirtle, and gown so that she was naked to just above the knee.
Gingerly, she stepped into the water. Though it was a bit murky, its coolness was a relief to the blisters that swelled in the arches of her feet.
Anne realized, as well, her own heat, a wave of fever that had clung to her since the encampment, dampening her smock with sweat.
She waded out a few feet. Behind her, the bull snorted and pawed at the ground.
A pair of ducks, floating on the other side of the pond, eyed her warily.
She supposed their nest was nearby, or else they’d be lifting off in flight.
They must be protecting their babes, she thought.
She waded out farther. The sun had risen above the trees by now, and it warmed her face and neck.
The pond increased in depth, but not by much.
Halfway to whatever shimmered in its center, the water was up to Anne’s calves.
Her feet sank into the muck on the bottom of the pond.
The silt oozed between her toes, its sliminess like vomit. She held back a gag.
As she neared the shining object, the water rose to her knees. She could make out what she thought was a blade, though by now the sun reflected blindingly off the object so she couldn’t see it clearly. Just a little farther, she thought.
In the pond’s center, the water reached her thighs and soaked the bottom of her gown, kirtle, and smock, still clutched in her left hand.
A school of minnows shot past her, darting to the edge of the pond, chasing after a cloud of gnats that hovered above the water’s surface.
The pair of ducks on the other side of the pond reared up, quacked, and flew away.
They won’t go far, Anne thought. She was close to the object now and could see it more clearly.
It did have a blade, which was partially submerged in the mucky bottom of the pond.
At the top of the blade, a metal hilt, and in the middle of the hilt, a large, wine-colored topaz.
So it was a sword, then, probably tossed into the water by a knight, vanquished and dying, or having just slaughtered someone and seeking to hide the evidence.
A sword would be very useful indeed, for didn’t Anne want to kill the king, her husband?
And even if she didn’t use the sword for that, it would be useful for self-defense as she finished her journey to London.
With her free hand, Anne grabbed the hilt of the sword and pulled.
It wobbled in the mucky pond bottom but didn’t dislodge.
She’d need two hands. Reluctantly, she let go of her skirts.
They floated atop the water around her, like an airy nest. With both hands, she yanked the sword, harder this time.
She needn’t have. The sword came out so easily that Anne stumbled back with the force of her pull, landing on her bottom in the pond, submerging herself in the cold water up to the top of her bodice, startled from the chill and grasping the sword firmly in both hands.
—
When Anne got back to the shore, Zeus was waiting for her, looking impatient. She sat down next to him. She was soaking wet, her clothing drenched. The bull nudged her affectionately. “Good boy,” she said, scratching under his chin.
She examined the sword. For having been fished out of a pond, it wasn’t in bad shape.
Its steel blade was sharp and clean. Its hilt was a bit tarnished, but that was only an indication that it was inlaid with silver.
She turned the sword over. On the other side of its blade she saw some words inscribed, but they were written in Welsh, a language she didn’t read or speak.
“I suppose the inscription says ‘Take me up,’ or ‘Cast me back,’ ” she joked with Zeus, speaking to him as though he weren’t a bull and could understand her.
“And I am King Arthur, finding the sword in a mucky pond instead of the misty lake surrounding Avalon?” It was a silly idea.
Anne was no more King Arthur than she was the ghost of Guinevere, even if her enemies had called her the woman king, seeking to insult her.
Henry had been infatuated with the tales of Arthur, as had his father before him, trying to remake Camelot at Hampton Court, paying vast sums to scholars who compiled elaborate family trees linking Henry’s own lineage to the long-ago king, who, as far as Anne was concerned and contrary to Henry’s beliefs, was probably the stuff of legends and not a real person.
In any case, in the tales of Arthur, a beautiful woman’s hand rose out of the lake to give him the sword, and Anne had fetched this sword herself.
Anne sat at the pond for a while, drying out in the sun’s warm rays.
She was hungry and had nothing left to eat, and she hadn’t slept more than a few hours the previous night before Simon accosted her.
Eventually, hunger and fatigue combined to pull her into a deep and dreamless slumber.
Curled up around the sword, Anne slept until midday.
When she woke, Zeus was still there, though she hadn’t tied him up before drifting off.
The bull nudged her, as if to say, “Get up, madam, you have promises to keep.” She sat and brushed herself clean.
The gown she’d borrowed from Alice was mostly dry.
Anne stood and picked up the heavy sword.
Would she be able to swing it at the critical moment, when she found Henry?
This was a twofold question. Would she be able to physically swing the sword, and would she be able to summon the resolve to slay her own husband, her king, whom she had loved so dearly?
Better to worry about physicality first. Anne lifted the sword above her head. Her arms shook with its heft.
She practiced swinging the sword by the pond shore, hoisting it over her head and bringing it slashing down through the air.
Where would she need to strike Henry to kill him?
Obviously beheading him would be the most effective, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength to do so.
One decisive blow to his back or chest would be a good start.
Or she could pierce him with the sharp blade, run him through.
She practiced lunging forward with the blade, forcing it through the imagined heart of her husband.