Chapter Thirty Stalking Prey
Chapter Thirty
Stalking Prey
The sword under Anne’s skirts swayed to and fro as she marched through the palace confidently, her too-large gown billowing behind her.
Cromwell’s words stayed with her. “I won’t help you,” he’d said, “but I won’t stand in your way.
” He’d gazed across the river and adjusted his velvet cap.
“And if you succeed, I will do as you ask. I will serve the Lady Elizabeth.”
“The Princess Elizabeth,” Anne had corrected.
“Yes,” Cromwell had said. “The Princess Elizabeth. I will sway the council and court for her ascension. I will be her advocate.”
He’d told her that the courtiers would be busy with outdoor games this afternoon and the palace deserted. Just in case, he’d said, she wanted to position herself strategically somewhere inside. But, he’d added, he didn’t want any details.
Anne walked to a window in the long white hall for which the palace was named and looked out onto the garden.
The ladies of court, including Jane, were gathered under a canopy, sipping wine and eating cheese and fruit, while the men, including the king, played tennis in the covered court Henry had spent a fortune constructing.
Were the men of court throwing their matches against the king?
Certainly, Anne thought, for since his leg injury, he played poorly, and yet they would let him win, to avoid being the target of his tantrums and bad tempers.
Anne wondered what the ladies were chatting about beneath their canopy.
The paintings she’d hung upside down yesterday had been righted by this morning, and she was curious to know if the court had noticed, or if servants had corrected her work before anybody could see it.
Even if her small perturbations had gone unnoticed, she knew they must be gossiping about the same ghost stories Cromwell had heard.
When hunting, it was best not to let the beast see you in advance of your shot, because the rush of fear spoiled the meat.
If you had to chase a deer, you might as well let it flee, unless your only aim was to mount its antlers in a great hall, to show them off.
Anne considered that a waste of meat. Think of all the people starving in the countryside—like the encampment of men she’d met.
Though those men had turned out to be scoundrels, as their queen, she felt for their sorrows and struggles.
Yes, when hunting, it was best not to be seen, but Anne wanted Henry to see her.
She wanted him to be afraid. She wanted him to cry and beg when she stood over him with her sword, which after all the forest had given to her, as though in ordination.
Anne stood in front of the window for some time, hoping a member of the court would look over and see her; none did.
But beside the queen’s tent, the Green Man reappeared, shaking his bottom and leaping in the air.
Jane and her ladies laughed as he shimmied about, and Anne wondered if they could see him.
Perhaps he was real and not a fever-dream hallucination after all.
Or were they laughing at something humorous in their conversation?
She was too far away to be sure. The Green Man looked over at her in the window where she stood, traced a heart in the air, and blew her a kiss.
—
Thinking of hunting reminded Anne how hungry she was, how bottomless her appetite, how insatiable her need for food.
She knew the kitchen downstairs would be busy with cooks and servants preparing the evening meal.
In fact, the faint scents of roasting fowl wafted through the main floor of the palace.
Not chicken, Anne thought. Something gamier.
Maybe pheasant? She imagined they were cooking many birds to feed the two dozen or so courtiers outside—not a large group, just the king’s favorites, but enough to require a dozen of whatever was being roasted.
When she noticed the staff taking a break outside the servants’ entrance on the north side of the palace, she sneaked down to the empty kitchen and pilfered an entire roast pheasant, which had been set on a table to cool.
She wrapped the steaming bird in a kitchen cloth to protect her hands and hastily carried it back upstairs, where she sat on the floor of the gallery, eating it greedily, wiping juice and bits of cooked flesh off her face with the overlong sleeve of her gown.
Bite by bite, she ate the entire bird. Satiated, finally, she left the carcass on the floor of the gallery—what did she care who cleaned it up?
—and made her way to the king’s chambers.
Soon the gentry would be returning from their afternoon of play.
Henry and his groomsmen would retreat to his chambers to dress for their evening meal.
She needed to take her place now, while the palace was empty.
Anne was surprised to find the king’s chambers unguarded.
After last night, she’d expected to find a man or two stationed here, but she supposed those men were with the king.
When she entered the king’s dressing room, she was overwhelmed by a loud ruckus of chirping birds.
The windows had been left open to let in the warm spring air, and over the Thames, an enormous flock of starlings swarmed together in a huge ball that turned in and over on itself hypnotically.
One of Anne’s childhood tutors had taught her that starlings formed these large clusters, called murmurations, to protect themselves from predators—safety in numbers.
Though, normally, murmurations happened only in the colder months of winter and early spring.
This swarm was out of season. These starlings should already be at their nests.
Where, Anne wondered, was the predator they sought to confuse and outrun, one so fierce it scared them from their broods?
The loud chirruping of the birds—there must have been two hundred of them—drowned out all other sound, save for the resonating hum of their flapping wings.
They swooped and swerved, swayed out over the river, then veered back toward the palace.
Out, then in. Out, then in, their noise lessening and growing, lessening and growing.
And then, all at once, they spun themselves up into a high column before bolting across the river and flying away.
It was then that Anne heard footsteps outside the king’s apartment.
Quickly, she hid behind the door leading to the bedchamber.
Through the crack between the door and its jamb, Anne peered with one eye into the dressing room.
Thomas Seymour walked into the room first, rosy-cheeked and jubilant, crowing about the king’s wins on the tennis court, no doubt hoping to flatter his way into a position on the Privy Council, though of course everybody knew it was Edward Seymour, Jane’s eldest brother, who was most likely to hold that position.
Edward was responsible and prudent, whereas Thomas was a bon vivant, reckless and entitled.
Thomas was, Anne knew, the kind of man Henry liked to hunt or play cards with, but not the type of solid workhorse he appointed to get things done.
Edward followed his brother, then came Cromwell, who must have joined them after he’d spoken to Anne along the river, and the king’s three remaining groomsmen.
Anne wondered about their morale. Until recently, William Brereton, Francis Weston, and Henry Norris had all been among their company, a full half of the six grooms of the privy chamber.
Their arrests and executions must have left the remaining three groomsmen rattled.
The men looked tired, exhausted in the way that a person who is deeply disturbed but must pretend to be happy might look.
Anne knew the look well. She had worn it often, pretending to be delighted in Henry’s company when in fact she found his behavior unsavory, rude, domineering, or arrogant.
The weight of her mantle—Anne, the most happy—had often been heavy.
Henry entered the room last. Henry. Her Henry.
It took her breath away to see him. He came straight into the room, facing her, as though he might walk up to the door, swing it aside, discover her hiding there, and embrace her.
“Oh Anne,” she imagined him saying in his booming voice, “you live!” But of course, if his face was flush with love and happiness, with excitement, it was for Jane and not for Anne.
It was for Jane, plain Jane, dutiful Jane, quiet Jane, Jane on whom the king was pinning his hopes of a son, Jane who waited, a patient bride, in chambers that just a week ago had been Anne’s, Jane who was willing to sleep in a murdered woman’s bed, fuck a murdered woman’s murderous husband.
Anne searched Henry’s face for any signs of fear, but Henry did not look scared.
He did not look perturbed by the ghost stories circulating the court, by the intruder found in his chambers yesterday evening. Anne wished he did.
The men talked of tennis and cards, of the feast tonight and the final wedding preparations for the ceremony the day after tomorrow.
They talked of pheasant hunting and what jewels the king should wear this evening.
They did not talk about the men missing in the room, Brereton, Weston, and Norris.
They did not talk about Elizabeth, or whether she’d been told of her mother’s death, or whether she was scared or sad or lonely, or wanted her mother.
They did not talk about the heads on pikes on London Bridge.
They did not talk about George Boleyn, bright star of the court, brighter than all of them combined, or about his widow, Jane, or about Anne’s mother or father or their sorrows, or about her sister, Mary.
And they did not talk about Anne. Instead, they talked about sport and fashion.
Anne wanted badly to leap out from behind the door, her arms raised like claws, her face pulled into a grimace, and roar loudly, like the Green Man, to scare the king and his men, to rip the kerchief off her neck and reveal her brutal scar, to remind them all of the carnage they were so keen to forget, to carouse through and drink away.
“Here, look at me! Look at what you have done! I am the king’s lawful wife, standing before you, shrieking and crazed. I have been given this sword by the land, and now I will use it to slay you all!” These were the things Anne wanted to say but couldn’t.
A breeze through the window blew the door just enough to knock it into Anne, and it made a small thump. Most of the men didn’t notice, lost in their discussion of hunting blinds and hound dogs, but Cromwell looked her way for a moment. She wondered if he saw her shadow through the crack.
And then the men swept out of the room as fast as they’d swept in.
When she was sure they were gone, Anne stepped out from behind the door, trembling and out of breath, and steadied herself against the wall.
She was shaken. There had been Henry, within arm’s reach.
Henry, who’d bewitched her with his love, who’d been her king and the divine head of her church, power on top of power.
Henry, eyes like blue ice in a cold sea, sweeping, ready to demolish.
Henry, who’d cried in her arms the night Katherine finally died.
She wondered if Jane had comforted him after her death.
Henry, whom she’d obeyed. If he’d told her to run naked through the halls of Hampton Court in full daylight, she would have done it. She would have done anything for him.
Anne crept to the dressing room door and peered around it. Henry and his men receded down the corridor, heading toward the great hall. She moved into the doorway, hand at her throat, fingering the scar beneath her kerchief, its grotesqueness. It was hers now, a part of her.
Just as the men were about to round the corner, Henry turned and looked back.
Anne froze. He was looking right at her.
His face blanched. His mouth opened and moved to make words, but no sound came out.
She held his gaze. Her Henry. Her love. Her destruction.
The courtiers turned the corner, and Henry, pushed forward by the inertia of the group, turned with them.