Chapter Thirty-Three Of Body Small, Of Power Regal
Chapter Thirty-Three
Of Body Small, of Power Regal
Did Henry’s eyes blink once after his beheading?
No, they fixed forward and did not move again.
Anne stared at the mess before her, at the corpse she’d made, at the large pool of blood.
She dropped the sword from her hand, and it clattered against the stone floor.
Part of her had thought that once she’d killed Henry, she’d die too.
She didn’t. She grew suddenly hot, as though she stood before a blazing hearth.
A window, she needed to open a window. She needed the air, and she needed to figure a way out of here, for Henry’s men would soon grow concerned with the length of time he had spent in the chapel and come and discover him, and if she stood here, the dead queen resurrected, blood on her feet, murder in her eyes, she would be arrested and tortured.
And Elizabeth, daughter of a verifiable monstrous woman, a man-eater who rose from the dead to murder a king—she’d likely be tortured as well, though a child, and possibly executed.
Anne walked, stocking-footed, to the easternmost wall of the octagonal chapel, where a small window overlooked the Thames.
She left behind bloody footprints; her skirts left a smeary bloody trail.
The window stuck a little. She had to push with her shoulder to open it.
Outside, the Thames hurried by. In the corridor, she heard footsteps, more than one pair.
A gentle knock at the door—the groomsmen would not want to disturb the king—a man’s voice asking, “Is everything all right in there, Your Highness?”
A pause. Two voices speaking in hushed tones.
A second saying, through the door, “Only, we heard a clatter and wondered if you require assistance?”
Anne’s heart beat quickly. She was hot, so hot. Beads of perspiration broke out on her brow, under her arms, at the backs of her knees. She clawed clumsily at the back of her gown, trying to loosen it.
Another knock. “Your Majesty?”
An intense itchiness crawled across her skin. She had never been so itchy. She scratched at her face, her neck, the skin of her arms so ferociously that drops of blood appeared. She knew that she might scar her skin. What did she care? What did it matter if she marred this dead flesh?
“Your Majesty? Is everything all right?” More whispering outside the door.
What happened next happened quickly, and—though she had already risen from the dead, though she had already reattached her head, though she had found a white bull in the woods, though she had been delivered a sword from the land, like the old legends of Arthur’s Excalibur, with which she had slain Henry—amazed even Anne.
As the gentlemen whispered outside the door, the itchiness went deeper, seeming to crawl inside Anne’s body.
The heat felt like it would burn her up.
She thought, Maybe this is it, what I have been waiting for, what the fever has been building toward, my work done, now may I perish?
She looked down at the bloody scratches on her arms, and from one of them, a sleek white feather erupted, three inches long and attached to her flesh.
Then another. Then another. Then a whole host of feathers covered both arms. She felt a pressure in her face and reached up to touch it.
Here, too, feathers. And this was the last she had her hands, which shrank into her arms. Her feathered arms shrank too; her whole body shrank in size.
Her head narrowed. Her nose and mouth hardened and curved outward into a yellow beak, her eyes widened into perfect circles and her vision sharpened, so much that she could see through the keyhole of the door, with startling clarity, the two groomsmen about to turn its handle.
Her legs shortened, pulling up toward her body, the skin growing thick and tough.
Her feet split into talons that grabbed at the air as she tumbled to the ground, atop her gown and kirtle and smock, which had fallen to the floor as her body transformed.
Elizabeth’s silken swaddling cloth, the last of the stolen pounds from the Tower, the sapphire diadem she’d saved for her daughter, and the ribbon that Alice had given her lay nestled in the fabric.
She’d have to leave them here. As her arms bent backward, becoming wings, the song they’d sung about her at her coronation echoed in her ears:
Of body small,
of power regal she is
and sharp of sight;
of courage hault,
no manner fault
is in this Falcon White.
Just as the men of the privy chamber turned the handle of the door, Anne took flight, and she found that she had all the muscle and strength to use these new wings, to carry her small, feathered body out the opened window of the privy chapel.
She circled and dipped, flying over the garden and its labyrinth, over the secret center chamber where she’d hidden, over the stone wall encircling Whitehall Palace, and out over the Thames.
—
Higher and higher Anne,the falcon, flew, and though it was night, she found that her vision was long and sharp, and that she could see all below her, all beyond her, all above her, in a panorama that stole her breath with its expansiveness.
She soared above the river. She soared above London and Southwark, above the countryside.
Perhaps this is what her insatiable appetite had been feeding, she thought, the falcon inside her.
She swooped and glided in the night sky, freely.
As she flew, she imagined the scene the gentlemen of the privy chamber had encountered in the chapel.
The king’s body, divorced from his head, lying on the floor.
The large volume of blood held in a human surrounding him, splashed across the pews, across the walls, across even the ceiling of the chapel, from the moment of decapitation.
A trail of bloody footprints. An open window.
Jane Seymour’s gown, soaked in blood, crumpled on the floor, and inside it a red kirtle, like the one the dead queen had worn at her execution, a few pounds, a silk cloth, a ribbon, and a stolen diadem.
Would the court imagine Jane had slain the king, then escaped through the open window?
Would they find her in her bed, asleep, her ladies swearing that she had not been elsewhere since returning from dinner and chastely bidding the king good night?
What would happen to her? It did not matter to Anne, who flew higher and farther, who left behind the gory scene, who left behind Henry, traitor and scoundrel, who’d held her heart once but did no more.
Cromwell would be notified. He would rally support.
He would do as she’d asked. He was a shrewd man, and powerful, a tactician. She would see him soon.
The wind blew through her feathers as she flew, riding the currents of air, weightless and unattached to anything at all.
She dipped and turned. She opened her beak and let out a shriek, which was the shriek of herself and of many other women, too many women, calling out together, piercing the night with a mighty arrow of shrillness. Enough! Enough! Enough!
Her thoughts turned to Elizabeth. Elizabeth, her love, her heart.
Elizabeth, at Hatfield Palace. She could fly there and see her.
Yes. The excitement of the idea overwhelmed her, beat through her, uncontrollable.
She turned and veered north toward Hatfield, the lyrics of her coronation song again echoing in her ears:
And where by wrong,
She has fleen long,
uncertain where to light.
Yes, she had been wronged. She had fled for a long time. But now she knew where to alight.
—
She flew with purpose, straight and true, over forest and field.
When at last she reached Hatfield, she circled the palace.
She could not recall which window was Elizabeth’s, but her falcon vision was keen.
She circled, peering into window after window.
There, Lady Bryan, asleep in her bed, her lady’s maid beside her, snoring.
There, Lord Bryan, asleep in the chair in his chambers, beside the fire, head slumped into his chest. There, the Lady Mary, thin and frail, so often angry, but in slumber, peaceful.
Finally, she spied the child Elizabeth asleep in her bedchamber, a little girl in a big bed, red curls spread out on the sheets around her like a beacon.
Anne swooped low into the window, left open for the cool night breeze.
She landed, wrapping her talons around the edge of the stone sill.
The moonlight fell across her daughter, her beautiful daughter, her heart, her purpose, her daughter, her daughter.
For a while, she perched and watched Elizabeth’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall.
The child turned in her sleep, wiped a hand across her eyes, shivered a bit.
She must be cold, Anne thought, and she lifted one taloned foot, as though to step toward the bed and cover her daughter with a blanket, and as she did so, her talons erupted back into legs, and then her arms returned to flesh, her wingtips to hands, her head rounded back out, her feathers receded into skin, her vision returned to its human level, which now seemed dim, her beak bloomed back into a nose and mouth, and she stood there, completely naked, in her daughter’s room.
Elizabeth opened her eyes. “Mama?” she whispered, looking confused. “Mama? Is that you?”
“Yes,” Anne replied. “Yes, my dear, mon coeur, ’tis I, Mama.” Tears welled in Anne’s eyes. She grabbed a linen sheet off the bed, wrapped herself in it, and went to her daughter, who held out her arms for her.
She swept the child up and cradled her, sobbing. Elizabeth reached her arms around Anne’s neck, buried her head beneath the grotesque scar, breathed in deeply, and sighed.
“Yes, Mama, ’tis you,” the child said. “ ’Tis you.”
“Shhhhh,” Anne cooed. “I am here. I am here.”