"Save my sovereign and master the King; the most godly, noble and gentle prince that is, and long may he reign over you." Take that Henry. It was imperative that she speak well of him, for Elizabeth's sake, but she said it with a sarcastic bite, and she smiled briefly knowing he would hear of it. With a deep breath, and a twinge of nervousness, she knelt, and waited for her women to remove her headdress.
"To Jesu Christ, I commend my soul," she began. The words, merely a breath at first, gained strength as she spoke. The block looked black and sooty, grooved on one side where she should have had to place her neck had the instrument been the customary axe. The straw was clean and aromatic around the base. For an instant she wanted to scream, but squelched it with her mantra.
"To Jesu Christ, I commend my soul." She thought of the almoner and the beautiful soul that shone through his eyes. He had given her her first true glimpse of God. That a simple man could give up his life and his nights for the belief that God loved, rather than meted justice, made her realize he owned something the great Cardinals did not. In the instant she knew. Her price had indeed been paid. A quiet peace engulfed her.
"Who has the sword?" The thick timbre of the executioner’s heavily accented voice came to her ears. Her mind went blank. What, he didn't have it? How cruel that they could make her wait another moment for the peace that was her due. She turned away from the block, gave a cursory glance around the platform. In the seconds she saw hundreds of grim faces, and hands before open mouths, felt a sudden clenching in her chest. In the seconds she saw her sister’s eyes suddenly grow wide and wet, her hand stuffed into her mouth and her chest heave with a sudden spasm. In those seconds she wanted to weep with her sister, for her brother, for her daughter. But the seconds died as quickly as the need to cry.
"To Jesu I commend my soul..." She began to whisper again, for those seconds told her the executioner had indeed, the sword.
Epilogue: RABBIT
Henry cantered to the parlor. Ah, she was still there—unmoved, quiet as a church mouse. Her face was as genteel and untroubled as an angel in rest. Beautiful, meek, Jane. He could hardly wait to give her this good news.
"Dearest," he began, and he was startled to see her jump as he said it. So special, to see her so timid, so pious that his voice could startle her.
"I have news," he said, but he refrained from saying more. He wanted to be next to her when he told her—close—his hand on hers.
"Yes?" Her voice sounded nervous, expectant. Perhaps she worried the other had been reprieved. No chance of it, she had been found guilty, and there could be no reprieve for a guilty woman—and so the news. Dead, dead, dead. Ha Ha!! The witch was dead. But he felt a small tug of guilt at his conscience, squelched it impatiently. She shouldn't have tortured him so. But then, if she hadn't, would he have noticed sweet Jane, modest Jane? The other had granted the favor, and he had repaid it. Such torturous, long years of being shackled. Prison of woes, that marriage, that relationship. Nothing had ever gone right. Never a moment of peace, or of happiness. And now it was over, thankfully, gratefully, over. And now, Jane. Oh, for the sons you will bring, the happiness you will bear. The kind of happiness and peace I deserve, the sons I deserve. He sat next to her. The warmth of her body engulfed him like sweet honey. Her perfume enveloped him; sexless; guileless. He was entranced.
"The witch has been executed," he blurted. For shame, such a callous statement, perhaps he should have cushioned it somehow, for sweet, tactful Jane. Her lips curled into a small 'o' and he touched them with his finger.
"Hush. She bewitched me. She's met her fate." Then he realized he should sound more sympathetic.
"Poor wretch," he added. Doubtless Jane felt charity for the other.
"Now we may be wed. If you wish it." Ah, the relief in the words. To say them finally with clear conscience. As of today, he was truly free; no mottled, uncertain validities, no threats of excommunication, no stubborn barriers. Catherine was gone—no hindrance there. And now the witch. He shuddered. He didn't even want to think of it. But she had deserved every ounce of penalty—hadn't she?
Jane looked at him, blue eyes wide, full of sweetness, light ash hair curtaining them.
"Yes," she said,
"We shall." Her voice was soft like velvet. How much he loved velvet, so soft and soothing.
"Tomorrow," he insisted,
"We shall be betrothed." And then reminded himself that it should be secret. The city had unfortunately rallied around the other; the heat of their hatred, altered. Somehow they thought justice had miscarried. To a Londoner, no greater sin existed.
"Should it be a private ceremony?" she asked. How wonderful, to hear such tact. His reply came automatically.
"Yes, dearest." Had she read his thoughts? Could he be that transparent? Why, Nicholas had the same ability.
"I saw a hare earlier, running across my lawn," she said absently. The hare—sign of a witch. How coincidental. Perhaps he could use it.
"A hare?" he asked, enjoying the study of her features; so polished, so refined.
"Yes," she said and he had the odd sense that she was reciting.
"It streaked across my lawn right about eleven."
"Why, that's the time she was executed." He couldn’t believe his good fortune. The city would love such a tale. And hopefully, it would quell some of their late defense of the other—if they believed she were evil.
"Hmm." He rubbed his chin.
"Perhaps a hare will run every year at this time. She was a witch, you know. We're better rid of her."
"Yes," Jane smiled, and he thought how it suited her.
"Better rid." And then, strangely, she laughed, and he, relieved that life would at last follow his direction, joined her.
-30-
As a sample, here's a taste of Throwing Clay Shadows
Isle of Eigg: The Croft: March 26, 1807
Something was wrong with Ma's belly. It was as big as a lump of bread dough, puffing up over the bowl so secretly, it didn’t seem to grow at all till she looked at it next. Maggie hated that about bread dough, that it grew when she wasn’t looking, and now matter how long she stared at it, trying to figure out how it got bigger, it just wouldn’t budge till she got tired and started playing with her favorite dollie Bessie. She’d forget all about watching the bowl, and there would be the dough. All rounded up and stinky and wanting fingers to poke into it. So for sure, she hated how the stuff grew. And she hated that Ma’s belly seemed to be keeping the same kind of secret.
It had grown into a bulging thing that made Ma sigh a lot and rub it a lot and, when she thought Maggie wasn't watching, talk to it a lot. The belly shortened Ma's usual long step and made her breathe heavy as though she was lugging a pot too large to handle. The belly pressed forward all the time, taking all the attention in the cottage and stealing touches from Da. But the belly couldn't trick Maggie; it hadn't always been big. Oh no. The day Maggie had made it to four fingers old, it had barely been there.
That was when Ma told Maggie there would be a sister, and because Ma knew things, Maggie believed it. Once, Ma told her that Da would hurt his thumb with his axe and sure enough, the morning came and he came clumping in from the yard, holding onto his hand with thick, red liquid covering the sleeve of his leine.
Later, she sat with Ma next to the fireplace where it was good and warm and listened to all the stories Ma had of the old days and the Highlands that she didn't visit no more. Sometimes there'd even be lessons about how to come to know things like Ma did, all in the accent that was so much stronger than Da's, "Close yer eyes, my own. Look a' the colors behind. They'll turn into kin, if ye want them tae."
Maggie tried hard to let the colors behind her lids change; she really wanted Ma to be proud of her. Sometimes she'd manage it, and she'd see Ma or Da, and sometimes if she was lucky she got to see the young boy wearing a strange white kilt that sometimes visited her in dreams. She wasn't sure she liked those dreams; they always made her feel all squirmy when she wo
ke up. Mostly, though, all she saw when she tried to see things was just the black that came with closed eyes.
It was much easier to spend her open-eye time watching for the sister.
So she waited and waited for the sister but nothing changed except the belly in its own secret way. It kept swelling like bread in a pan till she had to bend her neck backward just to look up and catch Ma's attention. Ma got a cough, too, that came more often and lasted longer as the belly grew. The cough made Ma's eyes water and made Da squinch his caterpillar brows together and grumble about the damp that came up through the mud floor.
Then Ma stopped moving around the cottage at all. She took to lying in bed all day. The coughs came in between horrible moaning sounds, then yelling sounds—and then cursing sounds. Hearing Ma curse was terrible enough but when she cursed at Da, well, that made Maggie grab her dollie and hide under the table to get away from it all.
"I want Ma not to cough," she told Bessie as they played beneath the table, but Bessie said nothing back, her painted-on dollie mouth was tucked into a smile that Maggie wanted to scratch off, just this once.
She loved Bessie. Bessie slept with her every night and grinned at her every morning, but today she couldn't stand the dollie's frozen smile. It was wrong to smile today. Wrong with Ma in bed and Da touching her forehead every time she groaned.
Maggie wanted to shut out the sounds, and every time she heard Da complain, "It isn't time. It isn't time..." she wanted to fling Bessie across the floor and yell at him to stop. She wanted everything to go back to the way it always was, with Ma and a small belly, with Da looking after the sheep and with Bessie being just a dollie with a stupid smile. Dumb dollie. Didn't she know she shouldn't smile today. Dollies should be careful if they didn't want to get a licking.
Maybe if she scraped a nail across the pink lips, she could scratch off the stupid smile. The pink stayed bright. She tried again. Again the lips stayed painted. No matter how much she scraped, Bessie still smiled and Ma still groaned and coughed.
Maybe she could work on the lessons. Maybe today she could get the colors behind her eyes to change into pictures. She'd pretend to be that boy with the white kilt. Sentu, his name was, Sentu, in his land with no water. And Bessie could be his friend, the one called Ahmen. Of course, he would get hurt—and good for him too, for smiling on such a day.
A screech came from Ma's bed that made Maggie feel like she did when she got caught pulling hair out of the hound's ear. Oh oh. She was going to get a licking now and all because she wanted Ahmen to get hurt. She shouldn't have wished it. Ma always knew when she was being a bad girl. Maybe if she squeezed her eyes right tight no one would see her and they'd forget she was being bad.
The colors behind her eyelids exploded into tiny bits. They had never done that before. And when the colors disappeared, she saw a new person in her mind: a young lass with skin the color of walnut bark. She had on an airisaidh of feathers instead of the usual plaid, this lass. How grand it would be to wear wings like that and not have to wear the stinky wool plaid that scratched her shoulders when it got wet. Those feathers looked soft on the lass; she looked content to wear such finery.
The lass beckoned to her with a long finger and Maggie caught a look at her eyes; they were different colors: one brown, one green. She wasn't sure she liked the way those eyes looked at her—looked through her and made her feel as though the bad things she'd been doing were even worse now the young lass knew about them. Oh, how she wished she'd not wanted to hurt Ahmen.
Then she was gone, and Maggie felt like her head was spinning in circles and Da was saying, "Come to, lassie, come to."
She peeped open one eye to see him crouched down next to her, swiping a tear from his stubbly cheek. She thought of the sheep and their babies and how he always crooned to them when they first were born and wrapped the lambs into his leine for a moment because he liked the newness of them. Now, a woolen lump got pressed close to Maggie's nose as she crouched beneath the table, but it didn't smell like a lamb. It had the same salty smell, but it didn't smell like barn and manure the way the sheep smelled either.
"It's a sister for ye, lass," he told her, squinching his brows even lower. He wiggled his ears, and she couldn't help smiling. Da's ears were so big they could make a hound bitch mistake him for her pup or so Ma always said.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to crawl out enough to peek at the lump.
It was a strange thing, the sister, not at all what she'd thought it would look like; she had thought it would look like the lass she'd seen behind her eyelids, but this wee thing wasn't even the same color. Maggie could almost see through its eyelids. It had no hair; its wrinkled mouth worked into a cry she could hardly hear. It was really a very ugly thing.
Da rose then, and made his way over to the bed where he slipped the lump of wool between the covers next to Ma.
Maggie wanted to see more of the lump. She scrambled over to the bed, not able to stop looking at it: the pink skin; the faerie fingers. There was something about this...thing, this small person that was the sister that made a squirming started up in her belly just like when she had those dreams about Sentu and Ahmen. Her belly twisted around in there, crept up her chest and sat on her tongue. Something was there. Some word. Some name. And every time she looked at the wee sister, that word-name wanted to be spoken. Though she couldn't move her tongue into whatever form the word wanted to take, she thought right away of the lass with walnut-bark skin.
Hugging Bessie close, she climbed onto the bed from the bottom where Ma's deer-long legs were covered with her favorite plaid.
"Come tae me, Maggie lass," Ma whispered. "Have a wee peek at yer sister." Then she started coughing again.
Da's hands were on Maggie's belly as he tried to pull her away.
"Leave her, Ang. It willna be long." Ma told him, reaching out a free hand.
Maggie made for it, worming her way to the top of the bed.
"She shouldn't..." Da started to say, but Ma shushed him the way she did when Maggie tried the no word on her.
And then Ma was pulling her close enough that the sister's screwed-shut eyes could be poked.
"Aye, she's real, lass," she said.
"She gots no hair," Maggie complained. Everything had hair, even the lambs when they were born.
Maggie felt a kiss land on her head as Ma chuckled. "Aye, but it's nae trouble," she said.
"I have hair," Maggie said proudly. Yes, she had hair and this new sister had none. She felt strangely happy about that for she knew Ma liked to touch it; she always crooned over the mane she called 'silkie skin but for the rat's nest,' and now she said the words she always did when Maggie tried to twist away from the inevitable brushing.
"Ye've hair like my Ma's, "Ma said, sighing. "Shame for it tae take a thousand strokes tae straighten the mess."
This time Ma didn't try to smooth it down and Maggie cuddled in close. It was warm there with Ma and with the sister. So warm.
She woke in her own bed, scratching her leg where a bedbug had been busy. Any sounds that had come from Ma's bed had stopped. Da stood in the middle of the cottage, holding onto a sister-sized bundle of wool that he placed on the floor next to the hearth. He barely moved for a moment, eyes that could be counted on to wink at her didn't even slip over her body; instead they were open as wide as those of an about-to-be-supper lamb.
Maggie peered across the room as she got up. She could see that Ma finally slept. Even teatime came and still she slept. Da wouldn't look at her. Instead, after tea, he carried the bundle of wool out into the spring air and Maggie crept to the doorway to see what all the goings-on were about.
The bundle lay on the ground next to the well, and Da seemed to be looking for something. She scratched her leg again, wondering, when she saw him dragging his shovel from the barn, what he wanted it for.
"Ah, lass," he said, noticing her. "Come to." He waggled his bony fingers toward her.
She shoved on her shoes and pulled a plaid tig
ht to her neck; maybe he would show her some new lambs...although it was still a little too early, or so he'd said yesterday.
"Would ye like a walk, lass?" he asked. "Just us two?" He hefted the shovel over his shoulder and reached out a hand. "It's a bonny day for it."
The way he said bonny day, and the way it almost sounded stuck in his throat made her think he had a surprise for her—a bath perhaps, somewhere out past the barn where he could have got it ready without her knowing. She shook her head in answer.
"Come to, lass." He took a step toward her. "We'll go out to the moors, and ye can scare up a grouse or two if ye've a want."
"OK," she said. "I'll scare eight of them," she said, and held up all of the fingers on one hand to show how many she'd roust for him.
She expected him to get excited at the thought of so many grouse for supper but he just left the bundle on the ground next to the cottage and he started away. If she wanted to scare the birds for him, she'd better get moving. Oh, how Ma would sleep with them all gone. The quiet. The peace. Even the hound followed. Watching Da, Maggie thought he moved an awful lot like the hound with its short legs fighting to pass through bushes much taller than it was.
It was fun to imagine him and the hound as brothers. They did look alike in some ways: the great brown eyes, the huge ears. She laughed at the thought as she slowed down enough for him to catch up. The smell of seaweed came up and over the moss at her, bringing with it a shiver of fog. She could see the spine of An Sgurr, off in the distance, through the jumbles of juniper brush, but it would disappear soon; Ma always said that even An Sgurr couldn't escape the mist.
Da said nothing as he stopped at the spot where they had all come for a picnic last summer. He looked about, and with a grunt, began digging into the earth. Maggie chased the hound while she waited; if there were birds to scare, best to run all around so they'd lift right where he could see. Besides, it would be supper soon, her belly told her so and he didn't even seem to be looking for any grouse for the pot.
Pray for Reign (an Anne Boleyn novel) Page 29
