Chapter Twenty-Eight Dead Men’s Shoes #3
The women stopped at a window in the gallery, across the room from where Anne hid in the alcove. “Ah yes,” the first lady said, “from here you can see the tract of land my husband has been newly deeded by the king. It used to belong to a bishop. All ours now.”
“What good fortune!” exclaimed the second.
“Indeed,” replied the first. “Well, as you know, I attended the whore on the scaffold,” she continued.
Her nose was running and she sucked a wad of snot back into her throat.
“This hay fever,” she said, “ ’tis the death of me each May.
As I was saying, I attended the whore on the scaffold, and I can assure you, she was thoroughly beheaded.
I handled her head myself, as the jailer’s wife wrapped it in linen.
’Twas all I could do not to spit in the whore’s face. Disgusting, what she did.”
Anne rolled her eyes. She shouldn’t be surprised that the court was repeating the lies Henry and Cromwell had told about her, but she was disappointed.
She wondered if either of these women had lain with Henry.
She wouldn’t put it past him to lie with his own cousin, especially one so many times removed, even though she appeared no more than fifteen.
“Even so,” replied the second lady, the cousin, “I don’t like to think about the late queen haunting the Tower.
What if she comes to haunt Hampton Court, or Whitehall?
I shouldn’t like to meet a ghost, or worry about meeting one.
What if she slips into my bed at night and sucks the breath out of me? ”
“I doubt the dead queen would visit you, if she came to haunt at court,” said the first lady, dismissively. “Don’t you think she’d torture Henry, or Jane?”
“Well, I heard,” said the second, “that a group of men in the woods reported seeing the dead queen’s ghost there as well, riding, of all things, a white bull.
And that she used witches’ magic to force the bull to gore a man to death.
Then she showed the whole lot of them her bare breasts and her witch’s mark, on which she suckles the devil’s offspring. ”
The first lady laughed. “What a ridiculous story, Agnes. You truly will believe anything.”
The two women chatted for a few more minutes about a lord who was courting Agnes before leaving the gallery.
Anne emerged from the alcove. It was alarming to hear the ghost stories circulating about her, though also thrilling, and part of her delighted in thinking about the stuffy English courtiers lying scared in their beds at night, fearing to peek out between their bed curtains, lest her ghostly form assault them.
Let them worry. Let them fear. Let them contemplate their complicity in her downfall, in her bloody execution, and dwell in guilt.
She wondered, as well, if Henry had heard the stories.
She hoped he had. She hoped they sent a shiver down his spine and made his testicles slink into his body, frightened.
She wanted him to feel the same fear she had in the Tower, awaiting her trial and execution, the same prolonged doom.
On the wall beside her hung a portrait of Henry’s late mother, pious-faced Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, whose marriage to Henry’s father had secured his claim on the throne.
Anne had never met the woman. She’d died in the Tower of London when Henry was eleven, shortly after giving birth to her last child, a daughter who also perished.
In portraits, Anne had always thought, Henry’s mother had looked mournful and woebegone.
Saying a quick prayer for the deceased queen, she took a moment to lift the portrait off the wall, turn it upside down, and rehang it.
Spying two more portraits within her reach, one of Margaret Beaufort, the king’s Lancastrian grandmother, and one of his Yorkist mother’s brothers—those poor babes murdered in the Tower—she did the same.
That should rattle them all, she thought.
She could feel her exhilaration building.
—
The Queen’s Chambers, so recently her own, were empty when she reached them. She stepped in, just for a moment, just to see. No Jane, and none of her ladies either. Anne imagined they were walking in the gardens, it being a pleasant afternoon, enjoying some leisure before the evening’s feast.
It was odd to see Jane’s things unpacked in the rooms. Here, Jane’s shoes.
There, Jane’s prayer book. Jane’s collection of dowdy gable hoods, which Anne could see the woman was attempting to bring back into fashion in the English court, undoubtedly another rebuke of Anne’s French style of dress.
In the dressing room, Anne found Jane’s gowns, a variety of silk and ermine, which, though regal, on the whole lacked flair.
Among them, Anne found two of her own gowns.
She could see upon inspecting them more closely that they’d already been tailored to fit Jane, who was taller than Anne, and heavier.
Anne could have guessed that this would happen; she’d owned many fine gowns and Henry, always frugal with other people’s possessions, hated to waste what could be reused.
Even so, it angered her. She picked up one of the gowns, made from blue silk, and held it to her chest.
Next to the bed, she spied the cradle where Elizabeth had slept when she’d accompanied Anne and Henry to Whitehall. Still holding the gown, Anne walked over and rocked the cradle softly with one hand.
From the hallway, Anne heard footsteps and muffled voices.
She panicked. At the back of the queen’s chambers was a doorway to the gardens, and Anne rushed out of it, still carrying the blue silk gown.
She knew there was a secret pathway to the king’s chambers through a sprawling labyrinth of hedges that Wolsey had begun and she and Henry had finished.
The king had delighted in chasing her through the garden maze.
She’d let him “catch” her just before the door to his chambers, through which he’d carry her, excited from the chase, and make love to her.
They’d passed many a free hour this way in the months they’d spent here as newlyweds.
Anne followed the twists and turns of the labyrinth, remembering where to turn and where to go straight, retracing those halcyon steps of better days.
As she walked, meandering through the maze’s twists and turns, taking her time, she ran a hand along the stiff leaves of the hedges.
Was that the Green Man she saw in the distance, darting around a corner?
When she reached the path she thought he’d taken, she peered down it but saw no one.
Eventually, she reached the door to Henry’s chambers.
The shadows of the hedges had grown long, and she imagined by now the king and court must be halfway through their feast. All she had to do was slip into the king’s chambers, hide in his chapel, and wait.
She put a hand to the door, pushed it open, and saw, standing not three feet away, a servant, who turned and looked right at her.