Chapter One The Arrow Chest #2
First, next, then, last. First, learn you are in your own grave.
Next, unwrap your headless body from its shroud.
Then, unwrap your head. Easy enough. She had two hands free now.
She felt the back of her head. She could feel her cap, which had come askew, through the linen.
She could feel the place, under the left side of her head, where the linen fabric was tucked.
She pulled gently. She could feel the fabric sliding out beneath her cheek, beneath her ear, ruffling her loose strands of hair, knocking her cap off entirely.
She could feel the fabric sticking at the nape of her neck, congealed there by her own blood.
Panicking, she yanked. The fabric came free, peeling with it the scabbed blood, a bit of the skin beneath.
She winced. She understood then that she could still feel pain.
“Why the delay?” she’d said to Kingston, the Tower constable, when her execution had been forestalled a day.
“He is a good swordsman and I have but little neck.” She certainly had but little neck now.
She pushed the linen down so that her face was uncovered.
She felt the features of her face. All there, all intact.
It must have been one blow, then. Swift. Clean.
First, learn you are in your own grave. Next, unwrap your headless body from its shroud.
Then, unwrap your head. Done. Last, get out of the box.
How to get out of the box? She rapped against its side again with her fist. The knock was hollow.
A good sign that she was not already buried.
That would be more difficult. Unwrapping herself had already strained her.
She was sweating. So she could still sweat.
With her hands she turned her head to look up at the lid of the box.
A faint light shone along one side of the box’s lid.
On the other side, a hinge. A set of hinges.
A box with its lid on hinges. A chest? What if all it took was a push?
She shifted onto her back in the box. She put her head on her stomach, looking upward.
With both hands, she pushed against the lid of the box, of the chest. The lid moved.
The gap of light along the edge grew wider.
She pushed again, sitting up as she did so, and opened the lid.
Her head rolled into her lap, face down.
She couldn’t see. But she could feel the air on her collarbones.
She picked her head up, held it at chest level.
With her hands, she moved her head to the left, then to the right, to take in her surroundings.
She was in a stone church. She recognized its modest interior.
St. Peter ad Vincula, the Tower chapel. The light that filtered in must be moonlight, because through the windows she could see the night sky.
In front of her stood the altar. She tucked her head under her left arm and stepped, carefully, out of the box.
She breathed heavily from the work of it.
Could you call it breathing? She leaned against the altar to steady herself.
Holding her head in both hands, she turned it to look back at the box.
She recognized the carvings on its side, ivy and acorns.
She remembered it from her hunts with Henry.
It was an arrow chest. An arrow chest? They had placed her body in an arrow chest. Were they going to bury her in this arrow chest?
She tucked her head back under her left arm and, with her right, swung the lid of the chest closed.
It slammed loudly. She hoped there was no one around to hear it.
First, discover you are the living dead in your own grave, which is an arrow chest. He didn’t even have the decency to plan for a coffin.
Next, get out of the box, the chest, your grave, with your head.
Then, realize you are still conscious, you can still feel pain, you are still capable of thought.
Of anger? Yes, of anger. Last, leave. Leave?
Yes, leave. She needed to leave, to flee.
With her head tucked under her arm, she hurried down the aisle of the church. At the door, she turned to look back at the box, the chest, her grave. She would leave it there. She was nobody’s quarry now.
Anne pushed the chapel door open and stepped into the cool May night, into the Tower of London’s Inner Ward.
She could see the Tower’s royal apartments, where she’d spent her last weeks.
She could see the White Tower, the old palace in the center of the Inner Ward.
And the scaffold, still erected, in Tower Green.
She didn’t want to look at it. She could hear the lioness, that nocturnal beast, padding in her pen in the Tower menagerie.
She ran across the open yard, past the scaffold, past the White Tower, past the royal apartments, through the gate of the Bloody Tower, toward River Gate.
She hoped it was late enough that the guards wouldn’t see her. She hoped the gate would still be open.
It was. Frog song from the riverbank filled the air as she passed through the gate’s stone arch, beneath the raised iron portcullis, and out onto the dock, where the jailer’s boat was tied.
She stepped into it. It sank a little with her weight.
She put her head down on its bottom. She could see each finely fitted wooden plank forming the vessel’s small hull.
Without sight, she turned and felt for the rope tying the boat to the dock and slipped it off the piling.
The small vessel drifted away into the current of the Thames.
She was free. She lay on her back in the bottom of the boat, bringing her head to rest on her stomach, so that she could see the stars above her, moving slowly past.