Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (35 page)

For a moment, my eyes tear over. I blink furiously to clear them and take a quick breath to steady myself.

Cecil, Walsingham, and Dee all look appropriately intent and grim. I have no doubt that they will do their utmost to help me, but I suspect their efforts will fall far short of what I need against so formidable an enemy.

Where else can I turn?

“My Spirit, I am going to the Tower. Arrange it.”

Cecil opens his mouth to protest or at the very least to ask what I am about, but catches himself. With a swift nod, he hurries off to arrange an escort.

I turn to Walsingham. “I will be back before dawn. Have something for me by then.”

He bows gravely.

“As for you, magus, consult the stars, cast your charts, but also turn that keen mind of yours to consider where a vampire king would go to conceal a valued hostage and himself as well.”

Dee’s hand falls away from his beard. He straightens his
shoulders and looks at me with clear determination. “I will do my utmost, Majesty.”

“I hope so, for much may turn upon it. Now all of you save my nurse leave me. I have had enough of boy’s garb and would be myself again.”

I would leave them with the belief that they are important to me, as they are. But I have no illusions. The fate of my realm rests upon me, and in truth I would not have it otherwise.

Scarcely has the door closed behind them that Kat presses me most urgently, “Let me go with you.”

Yanking off the doublet and shirt that are part of my disguise, I shake my head. “I cannot. It is too dangerous.”

She frowns at me just as she did when I was very young and up to no good. “To visit a grave? Where is the danger in that?”

I roll down my hose and add them to the pile. Kat drops a chemise over my head but she does not relent. “That is where you are going, is it not?”

She can be pardoned for assuming that in this dark hour of need, I seek the solace of my mother’s only memorial, scant though it is. And she is not entirely wrong. Even so, I try to dissuade her.

“There is more to the Tower than benighted St. Peter ad Vincula, so filled with death and pain.”

“Oh, indeed, there are any number of places where poor souls lived in fear of their fate or suffered even worse.”

She does not have to tell me that; I was one of those poor souls. As was Robin.

“Where I am going, you cannot come.”

She steps back a pace and glares at me. “Is that a fact? And why not, if I may ask? Do you imagine that anything can shock or dismay me? That I will cry out in terror and run away?”

When I fail to answer, she shakes her head chidingly. “For
pity’s sake, Elizabeth, I have been a prisoner there, too. I know what terrors that grim place holds. Let me come with you or toss me on the dust heap once and for all for truly I will believe myself of no more use to anyone.”

What choice have I when I love her? “We will ride hard,” I warn.

For a woman of her years, she does not spare herself. We make good time through the silent streets, our guard clattering after us. At the Tower, scarcely has the watchman thrown open the gate than I am in and riding across the green where my mother died. Kat is hard after me.

We dismount and she takes a moment to look around. Softly she says, “That last night before your coronation, I told myself that I would never come back to this place again.”

“I am sorry to bring you here.”

“Nonsense! I would not have it any other way. Where are we going?”

“We are there.”

I see her pale for she realizes at once what has brought me. Kat has never said if she was at the Tower the day my mother died, but from her expression I glean that she knows exactly where Anne’s blood was shed.

As I know, for I can feel it calling to me.

I do not kneel but fall instead upon the winter grass. It is brown and sere, with only hints of the green that will soon come. I feel the chill dampness through my skirts but scarcely notice it for an entirely different sensation, vastly more powerful, overwhelms me.

The essence of my mother’s life poured out here in sacrifice. My father’s effort at atonement was in truth the tribute she paid on my behalf, to preserve my soul and win for me the future she knew that I was meant to have.

“Mother!”

I am weeping and scarcely realize it. My tears fall upon the killing ground. I am within myself and not. Time and space bend, twisting out of all recognition.

Winter fades away and it is spring, but of a cruel and mocking sort in this place of death. I can smell the newly planked wood of the scaffold still redolent of the resins of the living trees from which it has been made. Except they are not trees, they are the monster’s bones, a breathing skeleton, and they are about to swallow me whole.

Looking down, I, Anne Boleyn, Queen of this realm, see the black damask of my skirts sway as I walk. To either side of the gravel path, fresh grass perfumes the air. The guards move ahead and behind me, the blades of their halberds gleaming. Above me, I see the sweep of the blue sky lightly streaked by cloud and feel the blessed warmth of the sun upon my face, warmth so soon to be denied me forever.

But surely the light of Almighty God is a far greater radiance that banishes all fear, all doubt, and all longing. I must cling to that else I lose all courage.

I have prayed until I can pray no more, asked forgiveness for my sins, beseeched any I have offended in this life to pardon me. All this I have done for the well-being of my soul. But I also have made other preparations. The letter to Elizabeth is written and passed into safe hands. I have consulted with trusted men who possess the arcane knowledge necessary to protect her and who will find those best suited to continue that task until she is of age to protect herself.

I am comforted that I have done all that I can and now there remains only to die.

Four steps lead up to the scaffold. I climb them slowly, my hands clasped at my waist. My ladies follow, weeping. Truly, I wish that they would not do so for I fear the sound of their grief will weaken me at this, the moment when I need my greatest strength.

At the top of the stairs, I pause and gaze out over the sea of those who have come to witness my death. Most are of the nobility. I recognize
several, malign men who conspired to turn the King against me for their own ends. They look well satisfied, but standing as I do on the brink of eternity, I know that their time will soon come. One or more of them will fail to satisfy Henry in some way and pay for it with his life. Even those who die in their beds at a great age will die all the same, as must all of us who have a claim to being human. When they do, they will face the same reckoning that I am about to confront.

This life is but the single beat of a heart carrying us into the life beyond.

With the assistance of my ladies, I remove my damask overgown. Beneath, I have dressed in bright red. The color of martyrdom proclaims my innocence and my peace with God. At sight of it, more than a few in the crowd gasp. Their countenances flicker with uncertainty.

Let their doubts take seed and grow. Let them speak of what they have seen this day in whispers, traveling ear to ear, that the Great Whore, as they have dubbed me, went to her death proclaiming that she was without stain and secure in the love of the Almighty.

I have come to the moment when it is expected that I will speak. I choose my words with the greatest care, knowing as I do that if I dare say anything of the vicious offense against God’s law and man’s that my royal husband is about to commit, I condemn our daughter to his vengeance. But knowing also that what I say will be remembered, chewed over through the years to come, and dissected for every shred of meaning.

On the very edge between life and death, about to face divine justice, which is the only justice that truly exists or matters in any way, it is well understood that I dare not lie. Accordingly, I say only that I am judged to die according to the law and that I yield myself to the will of the King. No one can dispute that for it is manifestly true. But I say nothing else. I confess to nothing; I admit no guilt.

In my silence is my absolution.

The malign men and their kind remain unmoved by my little speech, but here and there among the crowd I see tears begin to fall. Those who so lately condemned me now feel the thorn of doubt pierce their hearts.

Were I not already moving beyond the cares of this world, I would pity them for soon they will realize that if I am truly innocent, as they will fear, then they are ruled by a monster who killed his wife only because she failed to give him a son. What will the women of this realm make of that? What will the men who truly love their wives and daughters, and hold their lives to be of value, think of it?

With each word I speak, I am laying the road along which my daughter will walk to the throne as Queen regnant, accepted, loved, and trusted by her people.

It is time.

Henry’s notion of mercy is that I shall not be burned and for that I am duly grateful. So, too, am I glad to be spared butchering by an ax that can take several strikes to end a poor victim’s agony. Behind me stands a swordsman from France. I trust him to make a good job of it.

I sink to my knees and close my eyes, only to open them a moment later when I hear rustling. Here and there among the crowd, a few brave souls, openly weeping, are likewise kneeling. I am grateful for this small show of support but surprised when more follow suit. It is as though a wave rolls through the assembled mass. One by one, they fall to their knees until only a very few remain standing, held erect by their own complicity in my death. All around them the good people of this land honor the moment when my soul will take flight.

I have won! The truth will be known; my daughter, my beloved Elizabeth, will be safe. She will come into her own and she will save this realm from the one of whom I refuse to think in this my final moment.

I am ready.

I throw out my arms to release my soul. My lips shape my last words:
Into Your hands.
But it is, as I have promised, of my bright-haired child that I think.

An instant of pressure, nothing more. No pain, no terror. But then—

What trick is this? I see the crowd but differently, as though I hang above them. See their faces contorted with horror and grief. See the bright sky over all and the brilliant light opening in it to receive me. And just there, on the very edge of my darkening vision, I see the poor crumbled remains of what I was, no longer of any consequence, the river of my life flowing out over the scaffold, falling onto the green grass of a new season just now being born.

I am free.

I am, now and forever, Anne.

I am choking. On my knees, scrabbling in the dirt, I cannot breathe. I taste blood and for a moment fear that it is my mother’s, only to realize that I have pressed my finger to my neck where Mordred bit me and sucked the traces onto my tongue.

Kat kneels beside me, her arms flung round my shoulders. “Sweetling!”

Her voice echoes down through the tunnel of time I am hurtled through to return me to my rightful moment. I feel a powerful, vibrating force coming up through the earth against which I press my hands, unlike any force I have ever known but which I recognize at once. It is the heartbeat of the earth itself, our Mother. But it is my mother as well, the sacrifice of Anne that is my strength.

In the depths of winter, I am surrounded by the scent of roses.

Kat holds me as I stumble to my feet. Grasping her hand, I turn, seeking frantically until I see it finally … rising in gleaming white above all else.

“Come with me!”

Please God that I have her fortitude when I attain her age. Together, we mount the steps leading up through the height of the great White Tower, built by the Conqueror when the Normans first came to this land. It is well-known that the tower stands upon far older remains that were discovered when its
foundation was dug. A watchtower has been in this place at the bend of the river for as long as people have dwelled in this land.