Copyright 2001-Rhys-Michael Silverlocke-Phoenix, Arizona

 

   In the fall of the year 2001, as the world was settling into

the new millennium with various degrees of comfort, I met an

impossible little man with an impossible story.  A story which

the publishers of this work have already labelled "fiction", but

which I believe with all of my heart.

  You will need a little background first on me, on my work and

how I came to be in that place on that day, thinking those

particular thoughts... so I provide it here as briefly as I can.

  It happened like this:

  I grew up in a small rural community, had two parents who I

imagine loved me as much as any parents loved any child, and went

to public school like anyone else.  From my earliest memories the

subject of history fascinated me and I devoted much of my teen

years and my early twenties to the study.  To the surprise of no

one at all, I eventually became a tenured professor of history at

a medium-sized university. Apart from dealing with irate students

confused by their grades or my illegibly scrawled comments on the

margin of some paper they had written it wasn't a bad way to make

a living.

  My upbringing and relentless study of history had suggested to

me rather strongly that life involved struggle.  To chart a

course through the maze of distractions the world has to offer

(and still find time to earn a decent income, keep the place you

live clean, do the laundry, and maybe find ten minutes to do

something one actually might enjoy) is a juggling act.  It gets

more complex and involved daily; man was born to struggle. I

think that without that struggle the profits and result of our

collective efforts would be meaningless.

  One day I had an experience which changed my life and the way I

was to think of myself forever. It started very small; isn't it

odd how the largest events always begin simply?

  What happened was this: an idea came to me in the shower.

  Unremarkable, certainly.  Doesn't everyone get ideas in the

shower?  There is that interminable pause as you sit for 3

minutes with the conditioner on, and you've scrubbed and

rescrubbed everything you can logically attend to (without

seeming overly vain or onanistic) and there remains still an

interval with which to do nothing at all but breathe in steam and

listen to the water pound on your shoulders. Ideas come at such

times to many people.

  This idea was somewhat different.  It dragged me from the

shower.  It sat me in a chair.  It took over my arms and legs and

mind and prevented me from eating or drinking or having a

cigarette until it had finished with me. And because of that idea

I soon ceased to be a teacher and eventually had a full-time

writing career.

  I will explain in detail the "process" by which an idea in a

shower makes its way into print form (over the objections of an

unwilling vehicle) as well as how a stodgy professor of history

ends up attending endless sci-fi conventions later on in this

prologue. I will also briefly cover how I ended my days as a

writer and settled into a graceful retirement without ever having

to make any real account for myself to the world-- or my fans. 

Skip that part if you like, as it doesn't advance the tale one

iota. It is just an indulgence on my part; a final shot of truth

from an old man who never expected to write again.

  For the moment let's just say that I began a new life that day

when I was hit with a compelling idea in the shower.  Some ten

hours later I held in my hands my first short story.  Amazed I

read it back.

  More surprising to me than writing a short story, I improbably

managed to sell it to the first magazine editor who actually read

it.  Just as a whim I had sent the thing off to three of the

larger magazines simultaneously to see if it could possibly make

sense to anyone other human being. The manuscript was returned

unread (along with a form letter implying the rudeness of sending

out "unsolicited manuscripts") by two editors; the third editor

bought it immediately.  I soon had a new coffee table set from

the proceeds.

  I felt rather guilty about the whole thing; it didn't feel

right somehow to make money so simply and without any real

thought. The true struggle was to come later I found.  But at

that moment I could not help thinking, "Well this was all too

easy..."

  To my further shock, the story went over so well with the

remnants of the public who still bother to read that I was asked

if I could come up with another tale for that same publication. 

After the second story was published came an amazing phone call

from a strange woman with an unexpectedly slow and somewhat

irritating speech pattern and I suddenly found I had a literary

agent.  Imagine that!

  More ideas came.  I dutifully got them all down and sent them

off to my agent.  Some got edited and rewritten a bit, sometimes

whole chapters seemed to vanish.  But most of it made its way

onto the bookshelves in the better book stores.  I eventually

retired from teaching to write full time.

  I made my living as a writer for decades, never actually huge

in the public eye but seldom off the shelves; I was a prolific if

not profound writer, and had carved out my little niche in the

marketplace.

  On my sixtieth birthday, I resolved at long last to give it all

up-- just say goodbye to the whole business and devote the rest

of my life to travel and personal enrichment.  I felt I had taken

dictation from unseen voices long enough and had at last earned a

rest.

  I intended to return to history, my first passion, and (without

seeking laurels for any achievement there or plans to write any

books in that arena) I hoped for nothing more than to live out my

days filling in the gaps, so to speak.  The good thing about

history is there is so much of it; we make more each and every

day.  I would have been content to pore over ancient tomes, and

unearthed treasures and take museum tours until I passed away

unnoticed in some hotel room.

  Yet here I am, again setting down a tale in print.  Who would

have thought it?

  When I stormed out of the last sci-fi convention and announced

my retirement {no I won't tell you the name under which I wrote;

it isn't important, and this tale is so far removed from anything

I have ever published as to make any connection with me

implausible} I thoroughly intended never to write again.

  I had grown weary of "the process", and the chat shows, and the

annual conventions, and the inevitable smug lectures given by

people who barely understood my work-- hell, I barely understood

it myself at times-- and the dealing with agents and publishing

companies (who demand a sequel to any book that makes a few

dollars, while refusing to reprint any book that doesn't sell up

to their over-inflated expectations-- regardless of content or

artistic value) and the plain simple fact dawned on me that not

many people bother themselves to read at all anymore.

  I felt I'd outlived my usefulness.

  There were devotees.  There always are such-- those who cannot

let go of the past.  I met many of them over the years.  My

"fans".  But somehow most of those who still practiced the nearly

lost art of reading seemed tragic misplaced souls to me.  They

shuffled about aimlessly like people seeking direction, or any

fantastic escape from the care and burden of their daily lives. 

It became clear after talking to many of them that while they

were fascinated by various works in print, real life seemed bland

and devoid of originality to them.  Ordinary daily life failed to

hold their interest.

  People who cannot connect with reality do not hold my interest.

  I found myself totally isolated within my own "craft" and

confronting the eventual demise of the art.  So I put away my

ergonomically-designed keyboard, and I turned off my computer and

boxed it up and put it all into a closet.

  I never liked the damned thing to begin with; using a computer

had always been a compromise for me and a source of sincere

frustration as well because I am not very good with computers.  I

was happy to be rid of the whirring, buzzing box and all its

peripherals and endless power boxes and cables.

  The computer had been a gift I gave myself shortly before I

retired from writing completely.  When the arthritis began to

settle in my joints I had been forced to give up the act of

writing with pen and paper-- my preferred method of writing over

the many years of my career.  Even though my penmanship tended to

wander about of its own accord (and resembled sanskrit more

closely than any other written form-- I say that because I cannot

read sanskrit, and the same is true of my penmanship) I preferred

writing with pen and paper because it actually felt like work.

  I have always had a certain guilt over my writing and the

punishment of doing it by hand had somehow alleviated this guilt.

 Not to mention the punishment of having to look at it later on

and try and deduce what had been intended by all those smeary

scratchings.

  When I had tenure as a history professor I detested grading or

commenting on papers.  I could never recall what I had commented

when the confused student proffered the paper asking for some

explanation.  Editors are far easier to deal with than college

students though, and I sometimes think all history professors are

frustrated science-fiction authors-- historians have a common

obsession with not only the way things actually happened, but

with the "could have happened" and the "should have happened" of

it all. 

  The story I am going to tell you is a "did happen" I firmly

believe that.  Otherwise I would not break my retirement vow. 

  You see, after I turned off my computer and began ignoring the

ideas which popped into my head demanding attention a funny thing

happened.  I felt happy.  I enjoyed myself.  I didn't miss it at

all.  Not the sweating or the eye-strain or the cramping in my

fingers or any of it. I had told all the tales I ever wanted to

tell and since books don't have the bells and whistles of more

modern entertainments I knew the dwindling of my audience could

only continue.  Eventually the ideas stopped intruding entirely.

  I returned to history.

  The Royal Houses of Europe during the 1500's and 1600's had

always compelled me in particular because I felt this a pivotal

time in the evolution of society, as well as religion.  I had cut

short my personal research into these families when I became a

professional author, but freed of that burden I returned to my

studies in earnest.

  I spent time reading in public libraries all over the world.  I

collected books with iconographs and images of those ruling

monarchs and barons and princes of long ago.  I recalled some of

my Latin and managed to read parts of some of the ancient books

written in the French or German of the period.

  I had a particular fondness for Henry the Eighth of England,

and had made him a principal study at various times throughout

the course of my life.  But at no time in my life did I ever

intend to write a book touching on Henry or his life and times. 

It simply would not have been possible because of "the process"

of my writing, which I now must explain as I promised earlier.

  From what you have read so far, you must have gleaned a small

appreciation for my feelings on the subject and the intrusion on

my life which is the act of writing.  I have heard other writers

speaking to fans over the years abut things like "outlines" and

"character arcs" and "foreshadowing" and other vague intangibles;

I spent years digesting the endless descriptions from these

venerable giants of the field, and listening to their advice to

fledgling authors about how to take their "germ of an idea" and

flesh it out.

  Wouldn't that be nice?  If you could get an idea, make up some

character names, draw a nice outline of what they will all do

(and when) and keep it orderly from page one to the final word? 

Wouldn't that be lovely?

  Probably. 

  But it has nothing to do with the "process" of writing I know.

 For me, writing is like a debilitating disease.  Or worse,

dictation and from a stern unyielding taskmaster who talks too

fast and refuses to repeat the parts which aren't properly heard.

 A taskmaster who is vague, forgetful and has no sense of

structure or linear motion.

  When discussing my writing I felt like the character in a Monty

Python sketch who announces he is "suffering from short stories"

and when asked when he caught the disease replies, "Once upon a

time..." and is then helpless to stop himself from launching into

a lengthy and complex tale.

  That is writing to me.  I try and take a shower BOOM the idea

comes.  I try and use the toilet?  Weed the garden?  Brush the

dogs?  BANG!  Out of nowhere "The Idea".  Enshrined in my mind

and beyond any debate or choice.  Like a ten-ton weight on the

back of my neck, it inevitably landed with a thud of realisation

which brooked no dismissal.  Sometimes a short story, sometimes

an entire book, appearing entirely on its own with no help from

me.

  I don't pick my character names; I have to read the work back

like anyone else to find out who is who, and what is going on. 

All I get is the first line... and a mental warning that I don't

have much time to get it copied down.  I don't get to plot out

neat twists or introduce pivotal characters or give them

redemptive arcs or anything like that.

  I just see the first line of "something" in my head.  At the

movies; reading in bed; trying to scramble some eggs.  Then I

have the choice which is no choice...

  I could continue my breakfast or shower or whatever.  I might

try and go blank and ignore the second line, and the third and

all the rest as they run by fully-fledged in my mind.  I could

just suffer through the resultant migraine until all the

paragraphs have gone by... like a complex dna chain scrolling on

a computer screen.

  That rarely happened though.  A typical "idea" would pull me

from the shower, dripping wet, wrapped in a towel.  Turn on the

computer, load the word-processor and start to type.  The first

line, then the second, then the rest-- trying to catch it all no

matter how fast it comes.

  Then six or ten hours later I'd stand up from the chair at my

desk as if waking from a nightmare.  My hair invariably matted to

my forehead, my breath rancid, my fingers throbbing, the towel

soaked with my sweat and my eyes bleary I would require another

shower.  Then a cigarette and something to drink.  When writing I

cannot rise from the chair even if thirst is making me dizzy or I

have the shakes from a lack of nicotine.

  After I restored myself I would print out and sift through what

I had written.  Usually I ended up with forty pages or more.

  I sometimes discovered a complete story in my hands at the end

of a session.  I always enjoyed that sort of result.  But other

times I was not so fortunate and realised I had only the first

chapter of a much larger work and that the "process" was likely

to repeat daily until the entire work lay complete on my desk.

  I always read back the pages before I went on to the next

section.  I am as curious as the next person and frankly I had no

other way to learn their contents.  I do not recall the words as

I type them, nor anything else related to the work.  I don't know

the names of the players, what the foreshadowing means or if the

story I am working on falls into the category of my usual writing

or if it will be salable.  Will it be a mystery?  A comedy?  More

sci-fi... maybe a fantastic tale of space aliens? 

  I am as helpless to know as any reader who ever picked up any

of my work.  I read it all back as if some strange hand penned

the tale, or shouted it at me in some code over long distance. 

Somehow I translated that code a letter at a time without ever

noting the gist of the message.

  So I am always the first person to read my own books-- if only

so I can discuss them intelligently later if called upon.

  When involved in a long project such as a book or novel series,

I discovered that the "dictation" sometimes proceeded out of

order, or in odd orders.  On one project I realised in looking

over all my printouts of the week that I had chapters one through

eleven, and chapters twenty-two and twenty-three completed, but

no middle of the book.  In reading it all back, I couldn't

conceive of how the story would go.  I could not see how, from

the beginning I read, the events in later chapters would ever

make sense to any reader (I was wrong of course, the book was a

best seller) and I also noted that I had written chapter 2 of an

entirely different book at some point during one of the sessions.

   After a lengthy book, my mind or the unseen force dictating to

my mind would usually give me a week or two off to relax before

again assailing me with some new series of words and paragraphs.

    Some people find all this odd.  Some people squirm to hear me

speak of such things-- unseen or alien voices placing visions

into my brain.  What can I say?  I caught novels...

  I think they'd be more discomfited if they ever had the

experience first-hand in their own shower some morning, if they

suddenly had to face an uncontrollable compulsion to sit and

write without any reason or understanding of the action.  Lucky

for the reading world I don't spook very easily, and I eventually

came to believe that writing was the work someone or something

had chosen for me.

  Frustrating work.  Confusing and sometimes unendurable work.

  Really, when I closed up my computer and the ideas finally

abated I felt more alive than I had in decades.  I'd no intention

of ever going back.

  I had all the money I could want or need. Two of my short

stories had become television movies; one of my books had become

a full-scale Hollywood production.  They always mangled my work

in adapting it; I learned to expect that.  But the money proved

more than sufficient to redress any wounds they thought they'd

inflicted on my pride.  Simply put, I didn't mind what they did

with the things once they bought them-- it hardly felt as if they

were my tales to tell or sell in the first place.  In my mind I

still remained more of a typist than a writer.

  That is the plain truth of me you need to know.  I am not a

writer.  When I try and outline something, force a plot to come

together and design characters I invariably fail and miserably. 

I have attempted the task a few times in my life when I felt a

subject important enough to pursue-- but none of those works ever

saw completion or publication.  I may have made much of my living

as a writer but I take little responsibility for the "art" of

writing.

  Through that career I made enough money that I could live very

comfortably on the interest my deposit accounts accrued, as well

as my royalties from continued sales of previous works.  Once I

retired I could finally afford to take the time to do all the

things I had told myself I was working for all my life.  Just to

be able to sit in reference rooms, or follow people around

castles looking at suits of amour.  To someone else the prospect

would have loomed as boring as a presidential election.  To me it

offered sheer bliss.

 

  England.  I was about to turn sixty-one.  The month of

November, in the Year of Our Departed Lord 2000.  I took the

Tower tour.

  The crown jewels remained on display, despite repeated robbery

attempts; they sparkled unadulterated by the passage of

centuries.  I gawked at them like any other tourist, but some of

the things which remained of Henry and his father and other

descendants and antecedents absolutely enthralled me.  Many

wonders survived and I drank in the sight of them.

  One of Henry's robes caught my eye.  On an unseen wire frame,

it floated as if by magic behind a glass wall.  I examined it as

best I could.  Such delicate work.  The pearls hand-sewed and the

fringe of fur had dulled and frayed over time but the overall

effect remained magnificent. I could not help picturing the man

in his robe and wondering if this was one of the garments his

first wife, the legendary Katherine, had made for him.

  Other objects caught my eye as the tour progressed. A slender

coronet of gold with a single emerald set in the apex-- surely a

woman's fetish-- some tapestries and silks.  Books delicately

lettered by hand which predated Gutenberg's first press.  Indeed,

the Tower contained a veritable wealth of treasures and memories.

 I recall thinking the Tower a great trove of learning and

culture.

  "The Tower was, and is a fearsome place.  Always..." came a

small voice from behind me.

  I looked around but could not see who spoke.  The guide

continued lecturing to the rest of the tour; off to the side some

children were playing louder than their parents had any

appreciation for; and a lazy guard eyed the clock near the

souvenir stand, hoping to leave early.

  To whoever had spoken I replied, "Well I rather like it here"

with a defiant little snort at whatever ghost or child had been

playing games with me.

  Like I said, I do not spook easily.  Nor am I easily

discouraged.  At times during the rest of the tour I seemed to

hear a tinkle of laughter, like distant bells. But no one else

seemed to hear it and I began to wonder if my mind decided to

play some tricks on me to repay me for ignoring any further

requests to continue taking dictation.

  I completed the tour and decided I needed to return a few

times; there was simply too much to absorb; the guides tend to

move you along fast when they think you are a casual tourist.  So

I spent a few weeks in the area, took the tour a few times more,

sat on the benches outside and stared up at the most infamous

prison in the world.

  I encountered no one I knew and yet at odd times had the

feeling I was being observed.  I know that sounds paranoid, but

over the years I have gotten very good at sensing when someone is

focused on me somewhere close and debating whether or not to

approach me.  I could feel it as plainly as I can feel my own

skin; someone was very near me on-and-off during the course of

those weeks and (if not stalking me) at least keeping an eye on

where I was going for some unknown reason.

  My dubious status as a celebrity in some circles had produced

many encounters with people anxious to get my attention over the

years.  Being a writer eventually entails conversations with the

audience, the people who first spent hours watching me on

television or speaking at a podium and "work up the courage" to

talk to me. Though I could see no one anywhere near me when I had

the sensation of being watched who was ostensibly "a fan" or

anything of the like, the feeling did not go away.

  One night at dinner (after I had taken the Tower tour for an

eighth or possibly ninth time and now knew the guide's patter

better than some of the guides themselves) I felt a tug at my

pants from under my table.  I looked down and saw nothing, though

off to the left I thought I could see a blur of something, like a

piece of crumpled paper or a rag which had been kicked suddenly

out the door of the restaurant.  Also at that precise moment I

heard in my mind the tinkle of distant bells... it reminded me

sharply of the small unidentified voice I had heard from behind

me that first day I took the Tower tour.

  I finished dinner with no other interruptions. It was a very

fine meal.  Don't let the English reputation for bad cooking as

an art form fool you; they do get a few things right.  The only

other thing that tugged at me for the remainder of the meal was

the waitress with the check at the end.    

  I returned to my hotel room, content to write off the entire

experience as imagination or continued paranoia.  Obviously I was

a shallow man; I thought I was mourning the loss of my celebrity

status and imagining people watching me, following me, and

tugging on my apparel for my attention-- when in fact no one knew

who I was at all, or cared.

  In that frame of mind I approached the door to the room, only

to be quietly shocked to hear a tinkling small voice coming from

inside.  I heard it as I opened the door with my card-key.

  "Come in, please.  Close the door-- it is chilled and I am

brittle today."  When I froze in the doorway it repeated softly

like distant wind-chimes, "Close the door.  Do not turn on the

light.  Sit there on the couch."

  I experienced a cold shock, then composed myself.  Okay....

someone is in your room. Someone with a still, quiet voice like

plates being washed in a far-off kitchen followed you back to

your hotel... and got there first???  Hmm...  Someone who knew

already where you were staying?  What could it mean?

  I hadn't moved for the switch; the room remained in near total

darkness.  I saw no one present.

  Understand this was hardly the first time I had come into a

room I thought empty... only to discover someone lying in wait

for me.  Far from it-- I had run into crazed fans and celebrity

seekers in hotels and convention centers all over the world.

Sometimes they wanted to be "in my world" or to touch me or to

get my autograph on something.  Sometimes they wanted to smother

me in endless flowery praise of my work.  I had also met the

disappointed, those for whom I had failed to measure up.  They

encountered me to berate me, to disapprove loudly of my work, or

to contradict my every supposed thesis.

  But this did not feel like one of those encounters somehow. 

Something was "in the air" as they say in bad novels.  Some

strange departure from my idle retirement had thrust itself upon

me and I now had a choice to make.

  I could have simply closed the door, taken the lift back down

to the lobby, called over the manager of the hotel and informed

him that someone had broken into my room.  In fact, I could have

rung for the police or the hotel security people from the phone

on the table in the hallway; I didn't need to go back downstairs

at all if I wanted to complain.

  But you already know I did none of those things.  Without

making the decision consciously I entered swiftly. I pulled the

door closed behind me, locked it and sat down on the couch as I

had been asked to do.

  "Do you smoke?" came the voice a little louder now that the

door was closed.

  "Not any longer" I replied. I had given it up recently and no

longer carried an emergency pack.  The response was a slight dull

tinkle, like a disappointed sigh, and I frowned a bit I think.

  "Pity.  I love the smell of it," the voice explained.  "Though

I have to be careful to avid the spark and the flame..." added in

a tone that indicated ordinary caution which anyone could surely

understand.

  "Sorry.  I don't have any."  I didn't know what else to say. 

The situation could not be described as usual or ordinary and

frankly I wanted a cigarette myself at that moment just to help

relax.

  "It isn't important" the voice assured me.

  I waited in the relative stillness of the room.  My aged eyes

began to adjust to the absence of light.  I saw a dim outline

of... I didn't know really.  Something.  Like a child sitting in

one of the chairs. 

  The chair came with the room, and rested against the far wall

at the furthest point in the room from the couch on which I was

seated-- just below a heavily draped window which obscured nearly

all the outside light.  That particular chair had been at the

desk to the right of the couch when I had left for the Tower

tour; clearly it had been moved by someone.  I found myself

wishing I could see better.

  "Don't turn on the lamp" the voice cautioned me again.

  I had only just thought of doing this.  "I won't," I assured

the barely visible figure.

  "Good.  You know how to listen.   That is important."  Again,

the words spoken by the voice, though faint and seemingly tinged

by crystals or metal implements clattering softly, had a very

ordinary sound to them.  It came to me that the speaker could

make any words sound ordinary.

  Aloud I replied, "I made my living that way," not expecting the

joke to be understood or perceived.

  Laughter.  Like the peals of very small bells.  "This I know

already.  I have heard you speak of your writing... of the

listening and the straining to take it all down when you cannot

make sense of it.

  "You are the perfect vehicle."

  I didn't know what to make of that.  I had too many questions

to sort so I asked the one foremost in my mind.  "Who are you? 

Who are you really?  And what is it you want of me?"

  More laughter.  Minutes of it.  And the chair shook slightly

and scuffled against the floor as the little figure seemed almost

to dance in his seat.

  "I am ageless and timeless. I have existed for millions upon

uncounted millions of years by your reckoning.  I was also born

into the court of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry The Swine-- who

you revere so highly in your thoughts."

 Bold statements, rife with contradictions.  "You have existed

for countless millennia, but you were born a few hundred years

ago," I mused aloud.

  "Exactly!" the thing chimed happily.  "You see!  I knew you

could listen!!!"  It laughed again, entirely at my expense.

  This confused me further.  I let a piece of my indignation at

having been stalked by this thing show briefly.  "You have not

answered my questions.  And I remind you that you are a guest in

my room."

  Embarrassed silence.  Finally the voice replied, "My manners

are not good, never were.  I make few apologies.  But I apologise

now. Will you accept that?"

  Somehow the odd timbre of the words, and the way they seemed to

hang in the air of the dark room made me uncomfortable.  I got

the strong impression I was speaking with someone or something

which may never have had cause or reason to apologise or account

for itself to anyone for anything.  The being in my room needed

my good will for something, something I didn't yet understand; it

nursed a need so compelling or dire that it would lower itself to

apologise to little me-- someone who hadn't lived millions of

years or been born into the Court of any king or queen.

  I waited.  The air remained thick and heavy in the silence.  I

began to suspect the thing of somehow projecting its emotional

state upon the room and upon me in particular.

  "I cannot help that," it replied to my unspoken thought.  "I am

as I am.  I make few apologies..." it reminded me.

  I began to get a sense of the voice.  Male.  Had to be.  Still

and small and tinkling but the intonation and the personality

seemed masculine to me.  I decided to treat him like anyone else

I might meet in a dark hotel room unexpectedly.

  "What is it you desire of me?" I asked pointedly.

  Much to my dismay, more laughter.

  "Why you know that already!  It is no more or less than you

always do-- I want you to tell a story for me.  I want you to

make order for me out of a jumble of words and ideas which have

fallen like twigs beside the road of my life... and now need to

be collected, categorised, labelled and placed in order to reform

the tree of memory.

  "I want you to tell my story.  To give it a context.  And to

make it real to anyone who reads it. You can do this... it is

what you do. 

  "I have read your work."

  I almost laughed myself.  My work?  What part of it reflected

me?  Nothing.  It was no part of me, just something I had been

compelled to type out and reorder in endless excruciating detail

over the years.

  "I've been to your website"

  I laughed aloud that time.

  There I sat in a dark hotel room thousands of miles from my

home, speaking with an unseen entity which defied encapsulation

and what was the elevated topic of our discussion?  The mysteries

of the universe?  The vast unseen forces of life and death which

permeate the struggle of humanity throughout the ages?

  No.  We were discussing the World Wide Web.

  "You've been to my website..." I could only echo, feeling I had

stepped out of my life and onto some strange new plateau that no

one had bothered to tell me existed beforehand.

  "I can read," it said hastily, almost defiantly, "I have

forgotten many things but I can still do that.  In these last

days I have learned to know that I have forgotten many things.

But then I have also learned about many new things.  Street lamps

without fire and the death of horses and cities that burn all

night and are not consumed... computer games..."

  I couldn't help it, I snorted. Unseen forces playing video

games and browsing auctions on E-bay.  I was seriously pondering

a more directly dubious reply, but at the same time I did not

wish to offend whoever or whatever was speaking with me.  I felt

privately gratified I had not imagined the odd events of the

previous days.  I left it at a snort.  

  "Do not doubt me.  I have no time for your doubts," the

tinkling voice seemed to snap sharply.  But the tone soon faded

back to a more ordinary one and he added, "I liked the story

about the dolls.  Such life they had in them.  And the silly

children who dared to play with them-- they got what they

deserved. Very apt.  You made them alive for me."

  I dimly recalled the story.  It was one of about a dozen I had

put up on my personal website to make myself appear active after

I had stopped writing and retired.  Too many letters had been

arriving through my publisher with demands for a website, so I

eventually acquiesced.  Never did I imagine that unseen beings of

supposed great age would peruse my little website.

  "It was a work of pure fiction," I pointed out.

  "It was real to me. I almost took off a hand trying to use the

mouse to scroll down and read it all".

  I had no idea how to respond to that or what he meant by it. 

In order to pre-empt the next heavy silence I finally demanded

again, "What are you???"

  The outline seemed to collect itself in the chair across from

me.  It seemed it drew in on its reserves of energy and became

somehow more distinct in the room, more physically there.  If my

words don't do justice to the experience it is because I am not a

writer and I am trying to describe something real and actual, not

a concept I invented and am familiar with intimately.

  The whatever-it-was rose unsteadily from its chair.  It took a

few hesitant steps toward me.  I could feel its fear, but not the

source.  Did it fear me?  Or fear my reaction?  Or did it simply

worry I might reject its offer to tell its story?  All I could do

was try not to go insane with all the unanswered questions and

strain to see it as it approached me.

  In the dimness I started to make out some of the details. 

Flower petals.  A button or two... mismatched sizes.  I saw what

looked like pieces of couch material, some string from a child's

yo-yo perhaps and twigs.  It shambled towards me and I stared

unable to stop myself. 

  I could almost see it fully.  It came into focus.  Then it

shuffled quickly back into the shadows again and took its chair

across the room from me.  Where it had stood now lay a sheaf of

yellowed parchments, bound by a frayed ribbon which had the look

of great age.

  "Take them.  Look at them.  You will need them.  They are part

of the story-- of my story.  Of Her story.  Take them."

  I cautiously got up and went to the spot on the floor, not

wanting to startle or frighten the little figure further.  I

thought about approaching it more closely and trying to get a

better look at it, but something told me to keep my distance.  I

lifted the pages and returned to my place on the couch facing it,

him, whatever.

  "You cannot read them now.  You will read them later when I

have gone," it told me.  "Do not fear, I will return.  Tomorrow,

or the next day.  When more of the detail returns and is crisp to

me.  Today I feel brittle, and it is all too new once again for

me to tell it yet."

  Explain, I thought.  Please explain.  To my shock the voice did

explain.

  "I have wandered the world for nearly three hundred years now.

 And I have slept for so very long.  I have not had my... I had

forgotten who I was.  In the time before my birth it was ever

thus... we existed but had no knowledge of our own existence.

  "I had come back to the Tower at the end.  Some fleeting

glimpse of memory had drawn me to that place-- the place where my

life and my education began.  But once there, looking at the

Tower I had no reason to continue on.  Whatever impetus drove me

to that place had fled

  "I fell down outside in the soft grass and lay there unnoticed

for what may have been years, decades or longer.  I have no

recollection of anything that happened to me or to the world in

that time.

  "But then I felt you.  Your thoughts.  Thoughts of that swine

Henry.  How you idolise that pig in your mind," the voice chided

softly, still using that matter-of-fact tone that conveyed no

judgements or menace but made everything sound merely ordinary.

  "I felt your thoughts.  And I began to recall.  I remembered

Her, most of all. She was... beyond anything.

  "Now, I would remember more.  I would have you give voice to my

memories with what you call history.  I would have you put order

to the things I have seen and learned and been shown.  I would

have the whole world know these things..."

  I thought about it. I really thought about it.  I knew this was

no hoax.  No.  Something sat here demanding my attention.  Not

human, my mind said.  Not possible, another voice inside me

whispered.  But here nevertheless, just across the room from me

where I could almost reach out and grab it.

  The thing jumped suddenly in its chair.  It became very

agitated and slid off the seat and slunk behind the chair.

  "No, don't run.  I won't approach you.  I won't touch you if

you don't wish it!"

  But the thing already had the window open behind the drapes and

was nearly halfway out the window.  It shimmered in the streaks

of invading light.

  "I must go," it said.  "I was leaving anyway.  I will return. 

This is... hard for me.  Being here.

  "I will return," it vowed.  Then it left so quickly I almost

didn't see it depart.

  But I had gotten a good look at the thing now.  It resembled,

so help me God, nothing so much as an assortment of twigs and

strings and fabric scraps bundled into the appearance of a small

man or masculine ragdoll.  Cotton and linen wrapped its joints,

buttons graced its eyes and it had a small polished stone--

possibly a tiger agate-- for its nose.  I shook my head in total

disbelief.

  I turned on the light after it left and I read the pages it had

given me.  First I thumbed through them suspiciously then I pored

over the pages it had left me intently.  These were pages torn

from a diary.  And whose diary?  You would not believe me.  I

scarcely believed it myself.

  I read and reread those pages all night; sleep proved

unthinkable.  My God!  Where did it get these pages?  When would

it return to tell me more? I could not wait!  I had to know more

and soon.  This thing had tweaked something very close to home in

my nature and I was thoroughly captivated.

  It had shown me but a small fragment of what it likely had to

offer me and I knew I could not rest properly until I had all of

it.  I needed the whole story, or as much of it as the creature

was able or willing to tell me.

  I called down to the front desk and had some food and an IBM

compatible computer sent up to my room.  In a modern hotel, a

person can rent anything from a fax machine to a live-in

bartender.  One of the only things I enjoyed about book tours and

conventions was fine hotel service.

  I set the computer up at the desk, ate the sandwiches I asked

for and began a new file.  I put into it my impressions and

memories of my encounter with the strange puppet-like creature. 

Then I returned to the pages I had been given to study.

  Eventually I passed out at the desk, still reading over the

tightly written lines on the aged vellum.  I awoke with a start

to the feeling of someone tugging at my sleeve.

  My vision cleared in time for me to see the small figure which

had been in my night's dreams quickly shuffle backwards out of my

reach.

  "She wrote them in the tower.  She wrote down as much of her

life as she could recall.  What else was there to do in such a

place?  They are a narrative on their own."

  I understood that much from what I had read so far; he hardly

needed to tell me what treasure I had before me.  Rather than

upset him I composed my thoughts and said simply, "You've

returned."

  "As I said I would."

  But you didn't say that it would be full daylight, nor that

you'd leave the drapes open and let me get so close a look at you

as I am having now.  My God!  What is it?  Is there a name for

it?  I quickly tried to hid my thoughts and awe.

  "No.  I have no name.  I have a title, but there is no name for

what I am."

  I realised it had read my thoughts again, as it had seemed to

the previous evening.  Needlessly I mentioned this aloud.

  "Yes.  It is something I learned to do.  It is not as hard as

you might think.  Of course when it comes to some people, the

harder trick is to tune out their thoughts-- so loudly do they

broadcast them.

  "But I had a good teacher.  I had the best of teachers."

  I digested that in light of the pages I had read the night

before.  "And you have recalled more of it now?  This story you

would tell... would have me tell?"

  "Yes.  Not all, but much.  I spent too long asleep so some of

it is lost.  Lost forever.  But much remains.  What remains you

will write..."

  An indignant impulse made me retort, "I will?"

  It nodded to me happily.  I heard the soft tinkling of its

laughter again as it pointed to the computer I'd had sent up. 

Clearly there was no mistaking my agreement.

  I opened a new file, calling it "The Virgin Queen" in honor of

the yellowed pages which sat on the desk.  I told the small being

I awaited its pleasure and we began.

  Over the next two weeks I listened to it talk, ramble, laugh

and muse.  I typed its thoughts and memories, its ponderings and

suspicions about its own nature.  I took every word of what it

had seen and learned in its long and bizarre life and added them

to the file.

  I took it all in, not daring to miss a single word, and was

very surprised to find an almost familiar pleasure in the act. 

Somehow it felt like all the writing I had ever done; I sat

removed from the tale and let other beings tell the story.  Had I

missed being a "vehicle" and secretly longed for something to

drive me out of retirement?  Had this little being somehow sensed

that too, in with all the other thoughts of mine he had read?

  Too many questions.

  The small creature of tatters and threads came and went over

the course of that two weeks.  Sitting still for hours speaking

nearly nonstop, then suddenly fleeing as if in panic from the

room-- only to return hours later, or the next day and begin anew

with some other recollection.

  The story came out in a jumble of people and places and images,

with no dates supplied.  It had no cohesion, no undercurrent or

driving force... it was simply memory.  I could not see any

approach to it as a "tale".

  After fourteen days I had everything the little figure recalled

or cared to share.  I understood many things, but I still had no

framework with which to begin to make one linear story out of the

now hundreds of pages full of disjointed memories the creature

had imparted to me.  In fact I had enough pages for several

volumes... but no story to tell.

  The night of the one month anniversary since I had visited the

Tower for the tour, the little creature told me I had all of it.

 There was nothing left.  He, or it, had accomplished its purpose

and had decided to move on.

  Where?  What will you do?  Where will you go?  I had many

questions.  But it left as it had arrived, unbidden and with more

questions remaining than it had answered.

  "I make few apologies," I thought I heard it say as it departed

my hotel room that last time, vowing I would never again see it

or its like in this world.  It insisted there was no place in the

modern world for such as he.  Its sole desire was that I tell the

story.  After that?  The little figure would be content to be a

fantasy or legend, and to drift finally and forever from mortal

sight.

  I do not know what became of the little man of sticks and cloth

and string.  Perhaps it still wanders the world. Perhaps it sits

at the base of the Tower and dreams of better times.  Perhaps it

has simply forgotten itself again and merely sleeps.  I hope that

is what happened... it brings me peace to think of it at rest and

contented to struggle no more.

  I spent one last night at the hotel, arranged for travel

reservations home and quit my life of idle research, determined

to find a framework and a context in which to tell the tale I had

been given.

  This first volume represents but a fraction of the material I

gathered over that two week period closeted in my room listening

to the meanderings of what for all the world could only be called

a pile of twisted sticks and rubbish.  It has taken me many

months of work to compile this one volume and the effort has

exhausted and drained me.  This may delay any future volumes--

but hopefully not delay them too long.

  To my small friend, I apologise for the label "fiction" which

the publisher has insisted on applying to this work.  It was

inevitable-- even with the proofs you gave me-- that people would

continue to disbelieve.

  Still, I hope I have done for you again what I managed to do in

that dismal little story about the evil dolls.  I hope I have

made it real for you again, fleshed it out and brought it back to

life as you wanted me to do so desperately. 

  I hope I will make it real for everyone.

  But if anyone reading this doesn't like the story well... don't

blame me.  I didn't plot this book out or name the characters or

give them their arcs (redemptive and unredemptive alike) or any

of the rest of it.  I don't work that way.

  The only things I take credit for are the bible quotes which

begin most chapters-- these are essentially meaningless and may

safely be ignored since the subject matter isn't really religious

in nature.  As for the dates I tried to approximate... those I

include out of habit or possibly duty.  I was a history professor

after all, never a writer despite my career.

  I do know how my explanations of writing sound and how it reads

to the average person; that is why I never before gave a full or

accurate account to any fan or at any speaking engagement.  To

most people it seems I am too self-effacing to take credit for my

work if it is "genius", or too cowardly to accept the blame for

it if it is garbage.

  I can accept that some people will have a hard time

understanding or accepting the situation as I have set it down

here.  But say what you will about my culpability for other books

published under my name over the years, in this case no one can

dispute my conviction that I am only the typist.  I am not the

author.  If you don't like this story then go read something

else.

  It seems I also make few apologies...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          "Thou shalt not take a wife..." Genesis, 24:37 -- December, 1534

  Eustache Chapuys adjusted his collar against the night air as

his swift horse charged out of the lowlands and crossed the final

miles to Moore House.

  Nearly there now, pray God he had come in time.

  He tried to imagine his appearance and wished for a handglass;

he could hardly approach so great a lady (in her sickbed or no)

looking disheveled and unkept as one freshly come from the wars.

 His greying hair, he kept under a cap his last wife had made for

him from rich wool.  The wind burned the skin of his face and he

imagined himself as russet as the mantle of evening had been when

he had set out on this journey.

  A span of hours ago he'd taken a welcome leave of the king--

and all his Court-- at Woodstock.  The front of any war seemed a

calmer, more serene environment, when contrasted with the recent

upheavals in the king's retinue and within the monarch's family.

  The very concept of "war" remained somehow tame, compared to

the Herculean labour which Eustache had just performed; he had

wrung from the petulant and stubborn king of England the right to

finally see the great lady, the woman "His Majesty" had set

aside, Queen Katherine.  A testimony to Eustache Chapuys and his

own innate stubbornness-- he had brooked no denial and refused to

be put off further by the king's irritated manner and threats. 

Chapuys stood his ground until he at last achieved his goal.

  In truth, Katherine's nephew the Emperor had commanded Chapuys

to the task, so he dared not fail in spite of his reluctance to

confront Henry.  But overall Eustache welcomed the assignment; he

had many concerns about the lady's health of late.

  It seemed mete, therefore, that he both looked and felt as if

he had waged a major campaign as he dismounted his horse in the

forecourt of the tree-shrouded manor.  He shook out the cramping

in his legs and waited for the blood to return to his numbed

buttocks as he tied his horse and sifted through the baggage

slung over its rear for his warrant.

  Nine years!  Damn the Pope for an insufferable idiot anyway! 

Why had His Holiness made such a show of taking nine long years

to finally make up his mind which side of his brown bread

contained the butter?  Damn the man for the political intriguer

he always had been.

  Chapuys swore silently.

  But secretly he understood the wily "Prince of Rome" in his

seeming of hesitation.  Simple logic demonstrated his reasons. 

The pope dared not risk losing England to the Lutheran Heresies,

so he needed Henry's goodwill.  But Chapuys knew that the Pope

also needed his own emperor's support against the French king

waging war in italy, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was

Katherine's nephew and utterly opposed to Henry's will.

  The pope dared not risk offending Katherine directly either,

for she had the love and support not only of her nephew, but of

the common people of England.  A sticky wicket, from the moment

Henry decided to set aside his wife in favour of another.

  The Pope dared play politics, and worst of all dared competence

and relish in the doing.  This all-encompassing vanity would be

the pontiff's downfall one day, Chapuys hoped.  The Pope could

not forever play these games; someone would come along one day to

throw grit into the complex mechanisms the Prince of Rome used to

spread his dominion over all the world.  One day, it must happen.

 The pontiff's arrogance must be his downfall... God willing.

  Then again... if any man living could hope to match the Pope's

skill at riding the changing tides of fortunes, that man had to

be King Henry himself.  A sheltered youth who spent nearly all

his time with scribes and priests and advisors, Henry had grown

into a broad king who felt no compunction about setting or

breaking laws or precedents on a whim, or based upon the sage

advice of some counsellor presently in his favour.

  In fact, Henry had clearly taken the Pope by surprise when he

severed the English Church from the Church of Rome and pronounced

himself the Supreme Head of the whole mess.  That event took

place less than a year ago; the tensions caused by the schism

continued to mount in ways no crowned head or minister of God

could have foreseen.

  This should never have happened, Eustache had told himself

repeatedly during the cold ride to the house where Katherine was

closeted-- the residence of the late Cardinal Woolsey, who had

died on the way to the Tower after refusing to accept the king's

wishes in setting aside his first wife to marry another.

  The Night Crow.  The Raven Witch... the Great Whore.  Chapuys

knew all of the nicknames for the new queen by heart.

  Chapuys wondered which one of Henry's many advisors it had been

(probably Norfolk, the old bastard) who had suggested that the

Lady Anne would make a better queen than the princess dowager.

  It stuck in his throat like sand: "The Princess Dowager".  What

a mouthful, and what a cruelty.  Eustache had been forcibly sworn

to address the lady he came to see in those damning terms by the

king himself.  He had no intention of honouring that pledge.  To

call a great lady a whore to her face is something not done

lightly, and never by a friend and longtime confidant.

  No, it should never been allowed to happen.  And Thomas Moore,

that excellent gentleman, now rotting in his grave.  And John

Fisher with him.  All for Henry's lie; for the king's mood and

conscience.  Two fine men, gone to the block or the flames for

refusing to say what they knew to be untrue: that the queen was

never married to the king. 

  The king's conscience, there's a laugh.  He does what he

pleases and cares not where he treads.

  Chapuys used the long walk inside and down the corridor to

compose himself.  He tried to hide his disgust as he displayed

his warrant briefly to the armed men who waited without the

queen's chambers and prevented all entry of those who would wish

her well.

  How the house itself had been changed by her presence!  The

very air felt stifled and oppressed.  The creaking of the

shutters in the wind sounded like sighs of lost hope, the sound

of a grudging acceptance of doom. 

  Many of the fine tapestries had been removed with the former

owner's death.  Chapuys had no doubt that Henry already arranged

to have many of the finest trappings adorn his own chambers by

now, or had given them to those he favoured at Court.  Some

paintings Chapuys recalled seeing had also been removed, and

their absence left shadows on the wall as he passed.

  Of course, this came as no surprise.  From the start, the fair

daughter of Aragon had been ever denied, ever abused and always

mistreated.  Though betrothed to Henry at a tender age, Katherine

had lived at Court for several years in relative obscurity--

awaiting her marriage at the pleasure of the dead king, Henry's

late father.  Permitted little household of her own, and with no

income, necessity forced Katherine to sell some of her dowry

plate and silver in order to feed herself, and the few ladies

permitted to attend her.

  Shameful, to see such a great lady abused by those who dared

call themselves not only gentlemen, but the highest of nobility.

   One thing Eustache did notice with a smile: the gifts.  Piled

offerings of food and cloth and incense and herbs from the locals

greeted him wherever he looked.  All about the entrance hall

baskets of fruit and flowers lined his way to the guarded door of

the bed-chamber. 

  He wondered if Katherine had seen some of these gifts; the love

the people still bore her could only serve to cheer her ailing

spirits, and soothe her tortured soul.

  And now Henry hints at joining in with the French king against

my Emperor.  That might make it impossible for the Emperor to

hold onto Milan... and now the Pope decides to speak... and now,

the queen may die... and what of lady Mary?  His thoughts jumbled

and ran together confusingly.

  Eustache shook his head, composed his features and approached

the door of her chamber feeling sheepish and unkempt.  This would

never do; he needed a glass in which to view his countenance, and

a comb for his hair.  But none stood convenient.

  Chapuys settled for smoothing his doublet and running his

fingers a few times through his stiffly matted hair.  His lady

deserved that much respect at least.

  He lifted his hand to knock at the door itself.

  A soldier prevented him.

  "I come to see Queen Katherine!" he shouted.  "I have leave

from His Majesty to do so... I advise you not to interfere."

  The man stiffened for a moment as if struck, then sullenly

stepped aside.

  "You stick!" came a weak but gleeful voice from within.  "Only

you could be so crass as to continue refer to me as the queen

when it has gone so sadly out of fashion."

  Eustache laughed at her regular mangling of his name (something

Katherine had done since childhood) and at her weak and very

poignant jest.  Yes, out of fashion indeed, and a lamentable

thing.

  "My lady," he said, dropping to one knee beside her bed.

  Katherine's duenna looked pleased to see her lady paid this

homage, but from the bed the weak voice chided, "Get up.  Get off

your knees old man-- you will freeze up and be stuck there."

  "Forever more, at your side.  Kneeling before you, Your

Majesty," he told her with deep emotion.

  "Get up.  I won't have it.  It won't do for a noble from the

Court of the Emperor himself to be grovelling before the lowly

person of a mere princess dowager.  Get up, I insist!" she raised

her voice slightly, though it cracked from lack of use.  She had

not given many "commands" lately, nor would she have any sane

expectation that those pronouncements would be honoured in the

circumstances. 

  He rose and stood before her.

  She looked ill, so terribly ill.  Frail and spent beyond her

years.  He could see the remnants of her beauty through the

sickly pallor of her face and her clouding eyes.  Her hair

remained long and beautiful, she obviously kept it clean and had

it swept back behind the tiara she still wore-- in direct

opposition to the orders of both the king and his council that

she surrender this object.

  He tried to recall the young girl bursting with hope and elan

whom he had first escorted to the English Court to meet her

proposed bridegroom.  It had not been that long ago.  Yet here

lay the same girl in ruins.  In his mind's eye he saw a vision of

that young girl and superimposed it on the present relic like a

palimpsest.  He managed a smile for her.

  "Better," she croaked, propping herself up with the aid of her

duenna and another of the young ladies still permitted to attend

her in her greatly reduced household.  "Now... what news have you

brought me?"

  "Much and varied, my lady.  For a start, the French army is all

but defeated in Italy... for the moment.  At long last we have

the moment's pause we have so badly needed.  Now, the Prince of

Rome is free to support your nephew in his claim against Henry.

  "The Pope has therefore declared the marriage to The Great

Whore invalid; he commands that the king return to you and cast

her off."

  "The Great Whore?" she repeated with hesitant concern.  "Do

they really call her that?"

  "Many do, Highness.  The king himself has been heard to say it

once or twice since she whelped-- His Majesty seems to have grown

less fond of his new wife with most wicked speed.  It is said he

already casts his eye towards the Lady Jane Seymour-- thoughts

that ill become a married man..." he wondered how much he dared

tell her, how much she actually needed to know.

  All through his war of words with King Henry and the cold ride,

Eustache had nursed the hope this news from Rome might help

Katherine mend her tortured mind, and thus help speed her flesh

likewise onto recovery.  But now, seeing her, he realised that

could not be.

  This woman does not have long to live.  Perhaps he should spare

her the worst of it?

  The queen didn't notice his frown or inner turmoil.  She told

him, "He is a man.  He cannot help himself.  But she will not

make him happy," she assured her old friend.

  "Is that prophecy?" he asked, wondering if any of her old

abilities still remained.

  "Very like," she responded softly, "very like."

  "If only the pope had taken a stand nine years ago!" Eustache

complained bitterly.

  "But he is a man too, and as his Maker made him.  He needed the

goodwill of both my sister Queen Juana and my husband the king. 

He sat atop the farmhouse like a crowing cock for so long he

began to believe he caused the sun to rise.

  "The letters of my friends, ah they comfort me greatly. And

Mary... the king has brought her back to court.  I am glad of it.

 Then, too there are the... but I am wandering.  My mind finds it

hard to focus lately, old stick.

  "Tell me of the king; tell me of my husband.  He still loves

me, I know that.  I know that.  Now that the pope... tell me

about the king," she repeated then settled back against her

cushions, frail and wan.

  Eustache bit back the rising tears.  His lady faded before him

like a the ghost of all his hopes.

  He told her, "Of course he loves you, Majesty.  How could any

man not love you with all his heart.  Your love was a prison to

him, and a man will struggle against imprisonment-- even should

it be the finest of cells with nothing but the richest of all

possible furnishings."

  "He risks his mortal soul..." she hissed softly.  There was no

menace in her tone, only concern for her former lord.

  "He listens to fools, who seek only their own advancement.  And

to women, who seek to turn his lust to their advantage..."

Eustache offered honestly.

  "Of course. He is a man.  But no one made lace for him like I

did, he often told me so.  The doublet with the pearls I made for

him... he always wore it."

  "He wears it still, Highness," he lied.

  "I must see her, you know.  You will see to that, yes?"

  Eustache looked confused.  "My lady?"

  "The Lady Anne.  You will bring her to me.  And the child.  I

must see them both before I die."  She closed her eyes and seemed

to drift off into deep slumber.

  "How long has she been thus?" he whispered to one of the

serving ladies.  Silence.  None would reveal a thing about their

lady to anyone, even a trusted friend.  They loved her, as he

loved her.

  He turned to leave, intending to summon his personal physician

to the house as soon as he could arrange it.  A weak voice

stopped him and he turned quickly to hear.

  "Soon.  It must be soon.  I have not long to live and it must

be soon."

  "Lady," he asked her hesitantly, "what makes you think she will

come?  She has never liked you, nor had any care or respect for

your wishes.  There are many who say that your current illness is

due to her witchery; there are many who believe she trafficks

with dark powers."

  "She will come," Katherine told him softly.

  Another prophecy... or a plea?

  She propped herself up again and opened her eyes fully,

revealing a hint of the commanding and penetrating presence she

once exuded.

  "She will come because the king tires of her; she will come

because once I die, he will be free to divorce her as he tried to

divorce me-- he would never do it while I live, for he knows in

losing the second wife he would be left with the first in the

eyes of all the world, and with a papal blessing in support of

ourself.

  "She will come, because she owes me a debt she can never repay

and she knows it all too well.  She will come because I ask it;

because I am a dying woman; because I am a queen and knew her in

her youth.  She will come."

  With that final pronouncement she slumped down into her

mattress, this time truly asleep.  Eustache excused himself and

left the house.  He set off for his own lodgings, and instructed

his doctor to go at once to the house of Cardinal Woolsey, there

to wait upon the queen-- which sparked a small argument.

  "No.  Not the Princess Dowager, dammit!"  He told the stubborn

physician, "Queen Katherine of England!"  Yes.  Her Majesty, the

wisest and most restrained woman whom Chapuys had ever known or

loved.

  After a brief contretemps, the doctor found himself propelled

out into the night air-- half-dressed, and with a handful of

golds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    "I believed not the words, until I came and mine

      eyes had seen it"- Kings 10:7 -- January, 1535

 

  Henry Norreys led the Lady Anne up the path and to the main

house.  Things seemed deserted, but he reminded himself that

spies lingered everywhere.  Perhaps they had been followed from

Westminster?

  He was being silly, of course. 

  "Why are we here again?" he asked.

  "It is a command performance.  I'm not sure myself why I

came... but then she has managed to thwart Henry's desires for

nearly a decade.  That is a skill I may soon need myself," she

added with a serious glance.

  He nodded.

  She left him outside, and grabbed at the bundle he held forth

to her.  It shifted slightly and she mumbled something and slung

it half over her shoulder gently and went inside.  The house also

looked deserted from within.

  A courtesy of Henry's, no doubt, to the dying woman; he had

removed the troops from without her door to allow her to expire

in relative peace and privacy.  The Lady Anne went inside

unchallenged.

  Two ladies stood in the fore-hall, urging her to go upstairs. 

She followed silently.

  Inside her bed-chamber, Katherine of Aragon wore her best silk

nightgown and sat propped up against her headboard.  She had her

ladies do her hair and makeup earlier and had been saving her

energies for nearly three days to channel into this one

encounter.  It would likely be the last thing she ever did, so

she wanted to look her best.

  "Leave us," she told her ladies as they ushered the younger

woman inside.

  The doors closed from without and Katherine called out, "Come

forward.  Let me look at you."

  Anne came to the bedside.  The smell of perfume barely covered

the odor of death and decay in the room.  But the woman in the

bed wore a smile of acceptance and showed no bitterness as her

rival approached her silently chewing her lower lip in agitation.

  "Come now, sit here by me.  I do not bite.  Is that her?" she

asked.

  Anne had to think a moment.  Oh yes, the baby.  She lifted the

hood off the infant and showed her to the dying woman.

  "Well now, isn't this a thing," Katherine told her, after

studying the baby for a few minutes.  "May I hold her?"

  Anne thought quickly.  Was this some danger?  Would the woman

dash the infant against the floor?  Would she smother it?  Was

her illness contagious?  But no, the woman in bed had to support

herself carefully against the wood of the headboard or she would

topple off the bed entirely; she was clearly too weak and infirm

to make any hostile moves and as for contagion... well they

already sat in the same room with her.  Besides, she had been

assured that the charm would be specific... only this woman and

no others...

  She handed the infant stiffly to the former queen, still

watching the other's every move warily.

  "My, but we are a big girl," Katherine cooed gently.  "Another

girl."

  Anne nodded glumly.

  "I can guess how well that went over with the Lord Of

Thunder..."

  Anne gasped.  No one used that name for the king openly-- it

referred ironically to his constant and annoying habit of

breaking wind loudly in crowded rooms, and had little to do with

his status as the nation's monarch.

  But then, she had heard much worse nicknames lately-- and some

ascribed to her own person.  She could excuse this fading woman

for stating what so many whispered in private.  She just nodded

agreement.

  "He will never have any healthy sons, if they do not come from

my womb," Katherine said, beginning to sweat and sigh from the

weight of the child gurgling and smiling in her arms.  "Here,

take your daughter.

  As she passed the babe to her mother, Katherine saw something,

a brief halo about the child's head and a flashing of light about

her swaddled form.  A penumbra of light made her glance again

more closely this time.  This child had the gift!!!  This child

had heard the truth in her words, just then!  Henry would never

have any sons, and the child, not having words or thoughts or

knowledge of what those words meant, nevertheless understood them

to be true.

  Now what?  How do I proceed from here?  Katherine had not been

prepared for this eventuality.  She had called Anne to her to

tell her that she had forgiven all sins and slights.  She had

wanted only to give such comfort she could, knowing the road this

young woman must soon walk when Katherine died.

  Still trying to think, she began her previously thought out

text.  "I want you to know I forgive you, Anne," she said.

  Anne looked at the same time frightened and humiliated.

  "I know what you've done.  There is a blackness inside me which

grows and devours me.  Soon I will die.  Took you much longer

than they told you it would, didn't it?"  And she smiled.  It was

terrible, that smile.

  Anne started to protest that she had no idea what the other

woman meant, to tell the dying woman this madness had nothing to

do with Anne Boleyn.  But she could not.  Anne saw, in that

terrible smile, the truth of her own selfish existence.

  "I only wanted him..." she blurted out, "I didn't mean to hurt

anyone else."

  "I know, dear," Katherine told her in soothing almost matronly

tone.  "I know all too well what it is like for one who is young,

for one who has the gift and knows how to use it.

  "I know what great temptation it is to simply take the things

we would have, to leave tomorrow for tomorrow and put all

thoughts of consequence behind.  These things I know all too

well.

  "Had I given more thought to the consequences I should never

have allowed the king to bed me in the first place.  But then I

would not have Mary, and she is a lovely child and as dear to me

as my own life.

  "You no longer see the future clearly either," she told the

weeping Anne Boleyn flatly.

  Anne wiped at her eyes.  "No.  Not any more.  Only flashes, and

never what I want to see."

  "Well, and now I know for certain.  It is Henry who has done

this thing, you know.  He would seek to corrupt the natural order

and he will not be stopped by anything or anyone."

  Anne sniffled, "You see this?" she asked with wonder.

  "Much of my vision ruptured with my hymen, when the king took

my youth from me.  But as I approach my end, some small fragment

or shred of it has returned to me.  Yes I can see that far.  And

I can see this too; it was not an accident."

  Anne wiped her eyes with a linen cloth and repeated,

"Accident?"

  "That I should have the gift; that you should also have it. 

That we should be brides of Henry.  He seeks to corrupt the

natural order of things..."

  Anne stopped and thought a moment, "A boy.  Like us.  He wants

a boy who sees and knows and does as we can do?  But that's

ridiculous!  The power doesn't pass along male lines."

  "Nevertheless..."

  Anne stared dumbly at this older woman.  A shriveled figure, a

mockery of its own youth and former beauty adorned in oils and

perfumes and powders... yet the mind remained razor keen.  This

old woman understood it all, and Anne, thinking herself so clever

all this time had missed it entirely!

  "This is perverse.  It cannot happen.  God will send another

flood to rid the land of such a one," she told Katherine.  She

looked absolutely appalled at the notion that a man could share

in the great gift she herself once shared in... and without the

consequence or restraint inherent to female practitioners of the

art.

  "It will not be permitted," the former queen replied, starting

to feel her energy reserves running out.  "God has no need of a

flood, and has promised not to do such a thing again.  We will be

God's instruments here..." her voice trailed off and she winced

and clutched her stomach briefly.

  The measures Katherine had taken to suppress her pain and clear

her mind had been very effective, but the effects would soon wear

off.  She had little time so she hurried forward without

considering further the ramifications.

  "He will have no son of power to live on and rule after him,"

Katherine told the stunned younger woman.  "Though he will wear

out many fine women in the attempt.  Most of them will be like

us, with the gift or the potential for it.  Someone he has

working for him at court is a witchsmeller, a sensitive.  He is

being advised by this person to court only certain women-- though

whether this is Henry's desire, or that of the mysterious someone

I cannot say for certain.

  "But someone, there is, who would make the next king of England

a witch, and one like the world has never seen.  For as our power

does wane after conception and the sundering of our virginity,

the reverse is held to be true for our male counterparts.  Such a

one has not been born in centuries, though Henry comes as close

as any man may do without outwardly manifesting the signs of the

gift itself.  Henry is as we are, though in him much of the

talent remains dormant.

  "Perhaps it is the inherent divinity of kingship that empowers

him; or perhaps he is ensorcelled from without by one who feeds

his power to further their own devices.  That far I cannot see.

  "Your power is all but broken, Anne.  You have been to his bed

too often, you have lost much of what you once knew.  That is why

you sought outside help to rid yourself of your rival," and she

indicated her own frail form in that role.

  "Lady..." Anne still had tears in her eyes; she had wronged

this woman and nothing could repair that damage.  "What must I do

now?" she asked.

  "Die well, dear Anne.  Die very well, and without ever letting

anyone see you crack or bend.  You have a year perhaps, no more."

  Anne began to cry anew and it came forth in gushing rivers now.

 She moaned and sobbed.  She pleaded with the older woman to

forgive her for this terrible thing she had done.  She purged

herself of all her evil intents, bared her heart in one great

rush of fear and humiliation and pain and remorse which lasted

many minutes.  All the while, the older woman reached out a hand

to touch her, to tell her she was forgiven, to calm her own

murderer.

  "Must I die, then?" Anne asked when she had composed herself

enough to speak.

  "Nothing can save you, Lady.  The king has already compassed

your death in his plans.  And he who waits without..." Katherine

trailed off.

  "Henry Norreys too?"

  "Yes.  And others.  Many.  There is a purge coming.  Much that

was done will be quickly undone.  Then it will be redone and

redoubled again.  All in vain pursuit of this goal of Henry's, or

of someone close to him.  But it will fail; we shall see to it,

you and I.

  "I will not live to see it either; my own death is written for

me to see and you will outlive me lady, if that brings you any

comfort.  But there will be time enough... we shall defeat this

purpose."

  Anne smiled, despite the horror of her own impending doom.  Two

weak women-- one on her deathbed, one as good as dead-- would put

a stop to the plans of the highest and mightiest in the land. 

With what soldiers and what armaments?

  "It is good you can still laugh," the former queen told her,

weakening further and settling back against the hard wood to keep

herself erect in the face of her returning pain.  "After Henry

set me aside, it took me years to recall how to laugh."

  "I am to die," Anne repeated.  "And you will soon die.  Your

death heralds my own, as your friend Eustache warned me it would.

 So what can either of us do to stop this plan?"

  "We can be brave.  We can be strong.  We can be queens," she

said each word deliberately through forced teeth. 

  Anne snorted, drying the last of her tears, "If any common

woman knew what it truly meant to be a queen..."

  "The post would go unfulfilled for aeons," Katherine finished.

 And they shared a frustrated and knowing smile.

  "Brave." 

  "And strong," Katherine told her.  "Never yield.  Never admit

to any charge they throw at you-- and it will get ugly Lady,

never doubt that.  They will strike at you in any way they can,

but if you remain strong and never give way, then you will have a

reward you cannot guess.  You will secure your place in history

forever."

  "What reward?"  Anne asked, her natural selfishness and

curiosity reasserting itself.

  "Your daughter will be the greatest queen ever known to this

island.  She will rule absolutely and fairly in a way that no man

has dared for centuries."

  Anne looked down at her child, still swaddled heavily against

the outside temperature.  The babe had little hair, looked pale

and weak.  Too weak to shoulder up such an immense burden.

  "Even so," Katherine told her, reading her thoughts.  "This

babe will one day hold the fate of nations in her hands.  And one

thing more; she also has the gift.  She has it like I have never

seen it. Already she can hear the truth in words and know for

herself the rightness or wrongness of a thing."

  Anne marvelled at that concept.  It had never occurred to her

that her daughter could be such a one.  Of course she had known

all her life that she might pass on some of the talent to her

offspring, but to hear she had mothered someone who doubled her

own original gifts took her completely aback.  The gift showed up

strongly only once or twice in a generation; more normally it was

dilute.

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "I have seen it," Katherine told her, sagging further into her

pillows, her colour beginning to pale.  "But only if you remain

strong.  You must never give in, not even in the fire or on the

block!"

  "The fire!  Not the fire!!!"  Anne shrieked and rose as if to

run from the room in terror for her life.  Katherine could almost

see the thoughts in the younger woman's head; got to get out, far

away, take what I can and flee before this happens.

  "It most likely will not come to that," Katherine told her

reassuringly, not knowing for a fact if she was misleading the

terrified woman.  "Most likely it will be the block."

  "You wouldn't think," Anne told her, trying to recapture her

dignity, "that, given the idea a person is going to die, the

means by which that person dies should be so significant.  But

I've a terrible fear of fire.  I hate it.  I don't want to be

burned."

  "It won't happen, if you are clever.  Unless you run away and

take the king's child from court with you.  Then you would

probably be burned as a traitor.  So abandon all thoughts of

fleeing to France."

  Anne shivered; this woman could read her very soul.  Why could

she not have befriended Katherine those many years ago, instead

of making endless jokes at her expense, labouring to displace her

from her own kingdom and ultimately seeking her life in the

pursuit of her own ambition?  Why had she become this cruel,

calculating evil thing?  Surely that was not what she intended

when first she discovered her great gifts and ability.

  "I must stay and die," she said.

  "Yes," Katherine agreed, wincing again. 

  "And if I do this, my daughter will rule like Solomon and I

will be assured of greatness throughout time."

  "Yes," Katherine repeated weakly, playing on the younger

woman's remaining vanity.  "The mother of the greatest lord who

walked the earth, female or no."

  "But it won't be the fire.  It will be the axe.  I'm not to be

burned."

  "Yes," came the voice, this time like a hiss of steam escaping

a pot.  Katherine was about to pass out.

  "Then no man shall break me, no matter the charge or the force

with which it is hurled.  I shall stand there, devout and

implacable.  A Queen.  I shall break their hearts and bedevil

their minds and do my utmost to thwart them in their every

desire."

  Slowly, Anne began to feel like herself again.  No more the

captive of massive forces impelling her to her own doom.  No, she

was a queen!  She would stand strong, show them all!  Make them

see what divinity and patience and sturdiness became be when

raised to the level of craft.

  "They will not break me," she repeated triumphantly.

  "Yes," Katherine hissed softly.  Suddenly, as another bout of

agony seized her she recalled something important and cried out,

"Norfalk!"

  "Lady?"  Anne asked, worried the woman would die right in that

moment.

  Katherine drew on her last reserves of strength, spent nearly

the last of her life forcing herself to remain conscious a few

moments longer.  She breathed, "You must talk to Katherine

Howard, your cousin. 

  "In my mind's eye she is queen already and a great lady, though

a time will come when all men's hands will turn against her. 

Right now she is but a tender girl.

  "You must seek her out, for she will be queen one day..."

  "But the Lady Jane..." Anne started, having heard the common

rumours.

  Katherine held herself awake with sheer determination, "Will

not outlast the first pair of slippers she wears as queen; she

lacks the gift.  Despite the king's ardor for her, she will soon

be pushed aside.  No, Katherine will one day be Henry's bride.  I

am certain of it.

  "You must see her, before it is too late.  Talk with her. 

Share with her." Katherine seemed to go blank and her eyes slowly

fell closed.  "She is like us..." she added, eyes still shut. 

Then she fell into a deep sleep from which she could not be

roused.

  The erstwhile-Queen, Anne Boleyn, walked from the death room

with her babe proudly cradled in her still trembling arms.  She

felt afraid, but confident.  She had been humbled, but also

recalled her pride and the meaning of the word "majesty". 

Flushed and shocked, she nonetheless prepared herself to become a

bulwark against the frustration of the king and his entire Court.

  Oh that poor woman, she thought as she left the house.  That

poor, poor woman... whom I have murdered.  Who forgives me.  Who

wants my baby to grow up and rule the world one day.  How I

misjudged her!  How I misled and misspent myself; my youth; my

gifts!

  Anne liked to think she still retained enough of her old

abilities to know the truth when she heard it.  But she could not

be certain.  Were there hidden devices of Katherine's at play

here; had the dying woman outlined the whole terrible and shining

truth of the future for her?  Or told her a dung-heap of lies?

  She left in the carriage with Henry Norreys and tried not to

think about the likelihood that he would soon be dead.  Oddly,

she felt worse about that than she did about her own impending

demise.  Henry Norreys remained innocent-- even after all those

years at Court-- and he didn't deserve to be dragged down into

her fate.

  But Queen Katherine's words left no room for argument.  She had

seen these things, and Anne herself knew how apt and precise the

gift could be when it chose to show something to one who had the

knack.

  "Let's drive around the town a bit before we go back to the

palace, Henry," she asked him.  Just to relish a few, last,

unmolested moments of pleasure.  Before the shouting comes;

before death came for her like a scorned lover to collect his

due.

  When she got home that night, the King was already in his

retirement, snoring loudly and reeking of drink.  She barely

glanced into his room before the odor compelled her to seek her

own chambers.

  She did not tell him that night or at any other time what had

passed between her and Queen Katherine.  She swore Henry Norreys

to silence upon leaving the house, and never mentioned the visit

to another soul.

  What did any of it mean?  Could it all be true?  She had sorely

underestimated her rival, that at least seemed certain.  She had

done the lady wrong, and no mistaking or denying it.  But... was

this some subtle revenge?  Could the lady have anything left of

her former gifts, lying in her deathbed as she certainly did.

  Anne needed to seek other counsels, to be more certain before

committing herself to any course of action-- especially one as

dangerous as attempting to thwart the king in his desires.

  She made hasty plans to look up Norfalk's niece Katherine

Howard.  She also made plans to visit someone less well bethought

at Court, but with an equally urgent errand.

  What remained after the tidal wave of Anne's tears and fears,

not unlike the single diadem in Pandora's box, was hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness

       is as iniquity..." I Samuel 15:23 -- November-May 1536

  Privately, in the late evening hours, Anne Boleyn placed some

grains of a harmless sedative in the wine of the two ladies

waiting on her in her private chambers.  They began yawning in

less than an hour, and Anne gently told them they should retire

for the night.  When they went to their beds, Anne immediately

enacted her secret design for the evening.

  She changed from her nightclothes swiftly and in near silence.

 She took from her wardrobe a pair of man's riding pants, black,

and a very plain silk blouse of the same colour.  She topped this

with a heavy black sweater which she claimed to be making for her

brother, George, the Lord Rochford.  Suitably attired and certain

Henry still took his cups downstairs, she crept out of her

chambers in darkness and made for the stables across the

courtyard.

  Only a few farriers still remained awake, but none paid any

attention to the slender "man" who grabbed a saddle and horsed

himself.  Confident she had not been observed by any who

mattered, Anne rode from the castle in the sweet evening air.

  She did not have far to travel, so she did not overtax the

horse but instead ambled slowly along a well-used path towards

the darkness of the forest.

  Someone lived in the forest, an old woman.  She had seen this

woman before, in a time of deepest need.  Now she had to see her

again.  She needed to see, beyond all things, and her vision had

deserted her along with her chaste virtues.

  But such things could be worked around by those with wit.  What

we cannot do for ourselves we can surely hire others to do for

us.

  As she rode on slowly in the near perfect darkness she wondered

how all events had managed to conspire so perfectly against her.

 A few months ago it had all been so simple; now the tapestry of

her future showed signs of the many moths nibbling away at it. 

Her fate rested in the hands of ambitious men-- men like

Cromwell, and his toady Thomas Cranmer-- formerly the confessor

to the Boleyn family, now Archbishop and a bold advocate of the

protestant cause.

  But that was hardly the worst of it.  The worst was King Henry

himself.  How he had changed towards her!  Anne could feel time

running out for her, just as the former queen had predicted, and

Henry's love had faded like so many of Anne's childish dreams.

  When they had first met, she and Henry, the moment had trumpets

and music and stars seemed to shine their approval on all.  They

rode together, danced together, played on the lute and sang

together.  The king wrote songs to her, swore of his undying love

and passion.

  But Anne had known him for a married man, and the thought of

removing or displacing Katherine intimidated her initially.  She

had tried to be good, to be true and keep faith with her God...

but she had been sorely tempted by the king and his arts of

persuasion.

  When she tried once to put a halt to the fever she could feel

rising within her, the king would hear none of it.  She had told

him they could not see each other again, that their private

meetings could only be thought of as unseemly by those who

whispered and plotted at Court.  But he had gone round to her

father, to her brothers, to beg them to entreat Anne to return to

him, to be his forever.

  Eventually she relented.

  That action sealed the fate of Katherine of Aragon, and it

pained her many times along the way.  But while her conscience

did rankle, and her penance would doubtless be harsh in the next

life, it had not prevented her from ousting her rival.

 

  Anne dismounted her horse in the stillness and did not evince

surprise when the small cottage door swung inward nearly

instantly.  She had been here before.

  She walked in.  Sulfurous fumes assailed her eyes and made them

water; a series of herbs and rank-smelling charms hung on the

walls, from the thatched roof, the door-frame and were stacked or

jarred on shelves.  A cauldron full of some concoction sat atop a

roaring fire.  The combination of pestilent odors combined to

nearly nauseate the young queen.

  The dwelling had only one room.  It contained (in addition to

shelves, fire, cauldron and many jars and bowls with varied

unguents and plants in them) a bed, a pair of badly made chairs,

a rug of dubious origin and what appeared to be a dead cat in one

corner of the room.

  Swallowing bile, Anne began, "I need your help... again."  She

sat uneasily in one of the chairs.

  Anne looked at the elderly woman and waited.  The woman

appeared much older than last time they had met, but still in

relatively good shape.  Her hair, stiff and grey and tangled as

it was, still remained full and shone in the light of her strong

fire.  Her eyes, too, they were alight with reflected fire.  The

source of that fire may or may not have been the kindling under

the large cauldron near the far wall.

  Anne had never known or asked her name, but most folk in the

area knew who she was and to call upon her in times of need. 

  "And doubtless you will pay me well," came a weary reply.

  "Of course."

  "Why not go to your other friend... you know.  The one who

helped you last time?"

  Anne shifted uncomfortably in the rickety chair.  "Friend?"

  "Do not seek to hide the truth from me, Lady."

  "Well yes," she started, "I did have cause to seek help from

another."

  "I know, Lady.  For I made very certain to be nowhere near when

you went out upon that dark errand."

  So that's why I could not find her!  Damn the witch anyway. 

But why does she see me now?  Does this bode well for my hopes? 

Anne held her surprise in check and calmly replied, "But you are

here this evening..."

  Out of a corner of her eye, Anne saw the "dead" cat twitch and

briefly gnaw at it's rear haunch in response to the bite of some

small insect.

  "Yes, Lady.  I am here," the old witch responded softly.

  "So?"

  She studied this young queen with her aged eyes.  "Very well, I

will not make you state your business; I know why you have come.

 And I know what it is you have done..."

  "I come to you because you see so much.  I do not find it

surprising that you also encompass my own actions in your scope."

 But secretly she had been taken somewhat aback.

  "You lie, Lady.  But that is well enough.  I care little for

the truth of late... it has the edge of a razor at times."

  Anne nodded agreement.

  "If we had spoken the last time you came hence, and I had

denied your desires, you would have had me dead, Lady.  Thus I

removed to another clime until your need had passed.  Nay, do not

bother to deny it, I had seen it, Lady."

  "As you see all.  As you see my desire now," Anne prompted.

  "Indeed, Lady.  You yearn for what is lost.  You are like that

man you hate, the Duke of Norfalk.  Always longing for things in

the past, for things gone by."

  Norfalk!  God's wounds, this woman knew her business well

enough.  No witch, no matter how strong, could realistically

expect to find the time or inclination to read every mind in the

kingdom.  But this one had certainly used some discernment in

reading at least the crucial ones.  Anne envied the woman her

gifts and her resultant knowledge.

  "And you are willing to grant this?"

  "As you said, I am here, Lady.  I await your pleasure.   But I

warn you, this will not be an easy thing.  You risk discomfort

and more if you stay.  Would you not rather go back to your great

palace and lie on your fine linens?"

  "I would have vision, understanding.  Before I return to face

my fate."

  "Your fate is not yet sealed, Lady.  Nothing under heaven is a

certainty.  But come, sit by me, and we shall see what we shall

see."

  Anne grimaced and inched her chair forward to sit next to the

older woman.  The witch took her right hand, rolled up the thick

sweater and exposed the bare forearm.

  She held the younger woman's arm firmly between her legs and

before Anne could react she had produced a sharp knife from the

folds of her own soiled robe and made three slender cuts about

halfway along.  Blood started to well up along these lines.

  "You would kill me!" Anne shouted.

  "Calmly, my Lady.  Do not move.  Let me work my arts.  Cuts

made in this wise do not kill, though they can spray blood far

and mightily if made too deeply.  Calmly.  I do not seek to do

you harm, but to grant your desires..."

  She soothed and whispered in a sing-song fashion that made Anne

become giddy... or was it the loss of blood doing that to her? 

Hard to tell.  Anne felt more and more relaxed with each second,

and she did not appear to be losing much blood... only a few

drops thusfar.  It trickled slowly down her forearm as the witch

muttered snatches of what sounded like songs in some strange

tongue. 

  Anne knew that the humming, the words, were mostly meaningless.

 They became a tool, to focus the mind, but contained no inherent

value.  Still, they added to the mystique and people did seem to

expect some mummery, rather than the silent practice of the

witch's mind and sight.  Give the public their trinket sand their

baubles, their miracles and their hand-waving sorcerers.

  Anne settled for the real thing.  The power of the mind

unleashed; actual useful magic.

  The humming took on an increased cadence now.  Anne could smell

some strange incense wafting through the air.  She opened her

eyes, and locked eyes with herself.

  Unnerving did not describe it aptly.  Bizarre.  Insane. 

Unpossible.  There she sat.

  Anne Boleyn looked out from the eyes of an aged crone, and saw

her own relaxed, still-bleeding form seated next to her.  Just as

this registered upon her, the vision turned her eyes inward, into

the mind of the old witch.

  She abruptly knew the woman's name, which was Lettys Carfax. 

She knew some of the woman's history in that same flash.  Knew

she had been orphaned at a young age, sent off to live with

uncaring relatives who considered her a drain on their waning

resources and begrudged her every morsel of food she consumed. 

Anne saw the woman's first romance, a man with steel grey eyes

who had...

  But all that faded.  The eyes closed involuntarily and the

vision departed from the plane of memory and proceeded down the

wide course of possible future events.

  Anne saw many things.  She saw her own death several times.  By

poison.  She saw herself in flames, charring on a stake as her

flesh melted.  She saw another woman, a queen, drugging Henry her

husband.  But he was not her husband then, for he had a new wife

by then.

  She saw Mary, and Elizabeth, and Edward who was yet to come. 

She saw the death of traitors and enemies and friends compassed

in the vision of this witch's spell.  She saw Archbishop Cranmer

languishing in the Tower for refusing to recant the "heresies"

espoused by his religion and in the prayer books which he had

made, and Henry had circulated as the only official doctrine of

the land.

  She saw Thomas Cromwell, and his friend Robert... what was the

man's surname?  Both dead.  This vision gave her no peace, though

she considered both men her enemies and rightly so.

  For a moment, she felt she had entered Cromwell's mind itself,

and saw just a glimmer of the twisted and complex plots the man

spent his every waking hour devising in his "service" to the

king.

  Everything began to darken and then went black.  Absurdly she

wondered if she had died.  But how could she wonder if she had

died?  Or was she now trapped?  Her body dead, her disembodied

essence trapped forever in a twisting labyrinth of this old

woman's mind?

  A sound startled her and she opened her eyes.  The sound was

the old crone slapping her across the face to get her attention.

 Anne came fully alert and caught the woman's hand in her own as

it started to swing again towards her face.

  "I'm here."

  "That is well," the witch replied, unruffled.  "You need to let

me bind these.  They will heal quickly, I promise you."

  She rose haltingly and went to a shelf with a clay jar upon it.

 She dipped her dirty fingers into the jar and returned to the

bleeding woman.  She delicately spread a soothing unguent on the

slender cuts and they began to close slightly on contact with the

ointment.

  She rolled down Anne's sleeves and told her, "Let no one see

your arms until these are gone.  There are some at Court who

might have the sense to know what they mean.

  You cannot let them burn you for a witch, Lady," the crone

joked evilly.

  "Not when they are so intent on having me killed for so many

other reasons..." Anne said.

  "Just so," the old woman agreed.  "Still, nothing is certain,

Lady.  I did see a slender hope for you.  Did you see it as

well?"

  "A baby.  A male heir.  If I give Henry his son, Cromwell and

Cranmer go to the block."

  "It is something to consider."

  "Is it???"  Anne shook her head.

  She had not seen the mysterious "someone" that Queen Katherine

had referred to.  But she could see the footprints where that

elusive manipulator had trodden.  An entity existed who desired a

puissant witch to control; that unseen labourer pressed the king

on in his excesses.  The "whoring" the king supposedly engaged in

was not what it seemed. 

  Henry only released his seed to certain women, she now

understood.  And only at certain times, when he had first saved

up his strength and focused his will and his spirit on one intent

for a period of time.  This activity appeared the random excess

of a lusty man, but in fact had been carefully plotted and

choreographed.

  The name and face of the "unseen" eluded her for the moment,

but the vision Katherine had outlined for her seemed now totally

vindicated.  The old witch had shown her the same future as the

dying woman had a few days before.

  "It cannot be allowed," Anne announced.

  "No.  It cannot.  I did not know if you would understand that,

Lady.  You are wiser than I took you for."

  Anne ignored the implied insult.  Besides, it was justified. 

She had been very silly, vain, absorbed in self love and her own

plotting.  But now... the world came first.  Before her life and

before the desires of the king himself-- or whoever plotted

behind the throne to secretly arrange events-- the safety of all

the people in the world must take precedence.

  "He would shake the world like a tree, to see what falls.  He

would crack it open like a walnut, to see what lay inside."

  "There is a reason, Lady, why the power does not travel openly

in males.  They are not fit vessels for nature's way, and they

heed not her guidance."

  "As I did not..." Anne remarked.

  The old woman didn't say a word.

  "I cannot give him a son."

  "No, Lady."

  "But I cannot die yet.  I have things still to do.  I must

secure a future for my daughter, or my death will see her

bastardized and displaced as heir."

  As she spoke, her mind remained a turmoil of scattered ideas. 

Perhaps I could have the son Henry wants, but not as he wants it?

 Could I keep my strength, my power from it?  Could some potion

or charm help in this?  Perhaps the other route... What if I

focused all my remaining energy into the task?  Would I be able

to control the result, would my son be able to protect me from

the wrath of a capricious king and the plottings of his many

advisors?

  "You chart a dangerous course, Lady," the old woman told her,

going to her large pot to stir it and shift it on the fire.  She

added more kindling, her back turned on Queen Anne as if her

title did not exist.

  "I may have to."

  Anne stood, nearly fainted and leaned on the chair for support.

  "Softly, Lady.  You will be weak for a day.  You were not bled

overmuch but every drop makes its loss known to the body.  You

must rest for a bit before you try and leave."

  Anne sat down and heeded the woman's words.  She thought on the

future, she formed a plan.  It would not keep her alive, but it

would forestall her inevitable death a while-- perhaps long

enough to finish her tasks.

 

 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

 

  A dance was held three weeks later, at the queen's pleasure. 

Henry had just learned that she had become pregnant by him again.

 She had spent weeks on the task and now knew for certain that

his seed had taken hold.  It would be a boy.

  She knew this, and she told him so, though he doubted what he

called her "feminine intuition" about such things.  He simply

held her and smiled and told her, "Pray with me.  Pray for a

son..."

  Behind that warm feeling and sentiment lingered the ever-

present threat.  The king needs an heir, the country will have it

and a girl will not do.  Pray for a son, or be displaced by a

younger wife who can provide one.

  She talked to George, her brother, about this in her chambers

just a few nights previous.  She told him of the pregnancy (over

the snorts of his wife, Lady Rochford, who jealously snapped at

Anne or any who spent the slightest time with her husband) and he

added his most profound agreement about the situation as it

stood.

  When his wife had left the room, Anne admitted to her brother,

"I haven't much time left... and I won't be alone when I go. 

There is a purge coming.

  "Plots circle about my head, like ravening birds."

  George told her, "I will pray for you, sister.  I shall pray

for us both."

  The infant in her arms had registered the truth of every word

they spoke.  Without words, somehow Elizabeth made her mother

know that she agreed as well.  Unsettling, to see such power in

one so young.

  So as she danced with her husband for all the world to see, the

Lady Anne was far from easy in her mind.  Fear stalked her like

the plague presently rampaging through the streets of London. 

  Weeks after the encounter with the old witch, memories of the

vision and some of the half-seen images still coalesced for Anne

when she could clear her mind enough to think.  Among other

things, she saw the Lady Rochford, her brother's wife, plotting

with Thomas Cromwell to stir up charges against her.

  She could already hear the whisperings at Court.  The great

Whore is pregnant again... will it be a son or will she have an

entire litter this time?  And who is the father?  Could the king

be sure the baby would have his blood?

  No, this dance, this merriment was not as it appeared.  Like

most of what transpired at Court, the outer deceptive pomp

shrouded the real intents and purposes driven into events.

  Before the evening ended, she found time to speak with her

husband.  Still glowing from the long-awaited good news, King

Henry the Eighth was in fine spirits and willing to grant her

nearly anything in anticipation of his son's arrival.

  "Men plot around me, husband.  They twist my words and sound

men against me and speak what must be treason... if I am the

queen."

  "You are the queen, no other.  I will speak with Cromwell..."

he assured her. 

  She accepted that and asked for no more.  Soon after she

retired and left Henry to his wine and his dancing.  Her

favourite minstrel, Mark Smeaton, played an ancient lay as she

left.  She smiled and nodded to him on her way out.

  Henry kept his promise and had words with Thomas Cromwell the

next morning.  But Anne's attempt to derail her fate merely

served to tighten the net which closed about her.  Because of her

words to her husband, one of her mortal enemies was alerted to

the danger in which he now stood, and thus he resolved to make

further endeavours to displace Anne Boleyn with all haste.

  Cromwell had gone beyond implying Henry was now cuckold a week

ago.  Now, he spoke of hints of adultery and other vices of the

queen.  He told Henry he could easily provide his king with

grounds and proofs to rid himself of the Lady Anne Boleyn. 

Henry's reaction startled and threatened him.

  Henry told his chief minister, "Pray she is not delivered of a

son, old friend.  For if she is, you and that old heretic Cranmer

will surely die..."

  "Sire!" Cromwell protested.

  "Your 'charges' against the queen could make my son a bastard

before he is born!  I will have this child, Thomas.  I will have

a strong male to follow me, to make me immortal and continue my

family line.  Pray that the Lady Anne does not give me a male

heir.  Tell Cranmer to pray for it too.  Or I will have your

heads on Tower Bridge."

  Cromwell could hardly pray for such a thing.  The very thought

was treason.  But he knew now the danger in which he stood.  A

male heir, though important to the succession, did not equal the

value he placed upon his own continued existence.

  Cromwell dared not idly sit by, so he devised a counter for the

danger in which he presently stood.  He involved the Lady

Rochford-- an easily suasible, and bitter woman.  A woman quite

willing to believe any ill of Anne Boleyn.

  Cromwell spoke to Lady Rochford.  He offered her advice, shared

the latest gossip both of Henry's Court and from abroad, and all

the while behind his pleasantries he subtly implied terrible

things to this woman about her own husband.  He led her to

believe many wickednesses and untruths.

   Far from being offended by his worst of imaginings, Lady

Rochford was all too apt to believe his whisperings and related

rumours contained the truth, that they corroborated things she

herself had long believed.  Cromwell gave her to believe her

husband had long been involved in terrible evils with his sister

Anne, and Lady Rochford went along with all his devisings.

  He gave to her a poison, subtly brewed and of very slight

strength.  Using the wife of her loving brother, Cromwell managed

to introduce but a few slender drops each day into Anne Boleyn's

food.  The queen would not die of it, certainly not.  But her son

could not thrive as she held him in her womb.  The child would be

delivered sickly, or hopefully not at all.

  Anne knew nothing of this, of course.  She had seen much

through the eyes and the mind of the old witch, but not every

specific detail of how the future would proceed.  A great many

things still remained up to chance, and the way one event

unfolded depended much on other events.  Too many small details

for one mind to sort or track.

  She did her best to follow the course she had charted for

herself.  To become pregnant.  To deliver the king a son.  But to

make sure it was in no wise the son he desired-- no, not a child

of power to be used by calculating and evil men.  Just a son of

his body and hers, but nothing more.

  Consciously, she held back her will from the making of this

baby.  She held the fragments of her remaining powers to herself,

and knotted all her strengths up into a ball in the deep recesses

of her own mind.  She sent no thoughts of warmth or encouragement

to the foetus in her womb, dared not reach out with her mind to

see if she could touch its consciousness for fear of awakening it

to power and desires better left untouched.

  She had eight months, she knew, before plans would begin anew

to send her to the block or worse.  She made good use of the

time.

  She had arranged already, through the auspices of her uncle,

The Duke of Norfalk, to encounter the girl which the bedridden

queen had spoken of, Katherine Howard.  She had the young girl

brought to Court and regularly spoke with her.

  Young Katherine Howard had an agile mind and a strong gift. 

Anne knew from her vision of the future that this girl would one

day reign in England as Henry's wife.  But this was not the queen

she had seen drugging him; that was some other girl not yet grown

who would come earlier or later than this young thing.

  Anne began secretly exposing Katherine Howard to the power of

her mind which remained.  By that declension she began exploring

the power in the young girl's own mind, and showed young

Katherine some of which she could be capable.

  Anne had feared the girl would explode in silly pratings about

witchcraft, and evil in the soul, and the many tools and charms

uninitiated people claimed would keep the Devil at bay.  But the

young, fair-faced blond had taken it all in stride.  She had long

known the thoughts of others around her, and had also experienced

"true dreams" enough times to realise she was different from her

siblings and the other children with whom she sometimes played.

  A few months into the relationship, Katherine asked her mentor,

"Are you really going to do it?  Are you really going to give him

a son?"

  Anne stiffened.  The child seemed so adult at times it proved

difficult to recall she was not an adult.  Did she deserve an

adult answer?  Could she be trusted with the truth?  A lot

depended on the reaction her answer would provoke.

  "No."  Anne simply said.  Then she waited for the reaction.

  "Good." 

  Anne smiled.  No problem here.  Katherine could continue her

instruction and Anne could continue laying her plans for her

daughter's legacy.

  But the fear never left her.  All through the pregnancy, though

Henry ostensibly doted on her and catered to her every whim, the

fear remained. 

  The queen planned to miscarry, of course.  She had put all her

remaining energies and power into achieving that goal.  The

pregnancy was but a ruse, a stalling tactic.  It gave her nearly

a year in which to lay the groundwork for her ultimate design,

her revenge on Henry.

  She had come to understand Henry at last.  It had taken much

time; she had seen her youth stripped away.  But the core of her

remained sound, clear, unadulterated.  Henry had become a

monster.  He lived for his own gratification, for the

consummation of his every desire.  Not a fit father, or husband,

or even monarch for that matter.

  And Henry had driven her to all she had done.  His persuasion,

his gifts and blandishments.  All these things he had used to

warp her, so she had become the woman who had coldly plotted and

executed the means of his wife's death.  But she would be

revenged.

  His desires would go unfulfilled, his prayers unannealed.  She

would use her dying breath and whatever power and craft God

allowed her in order to compass this revenge.

  The night Cranmer came to her in chambers, she knew she did not

have very long to live.  She accepted this, as she had accepted

so many things lately.  Perhaps that is what it meant to be a

queen; to know so much, yet remain powerless to do much more than

deal with events as they transpired.  And not to wish for better

times or other outcomes.

  The baby was still a few weeks overdue, but when Cranmer came

to her chambers she knew that her time had run out.  He offered

her kind, soothing words, and prayers for the future unborn lord

she carried.  He also offered her wine, mixed with a quantity of

rendered herbs that farmers had long know to be of benison when

used on animals who had gone past their "time" for delivery.

  Anne smelled the distillment when he handed it to her, knew it

for what it was.  She knew her eventual death lay in those few

drops, mixed with a healthy quantity of wine to dull their

bitterness.  She watched him hand her death, in a gilded chalice.

 How comic, that they should bring her the one thing which would

insure her own plans at this moment.

  With a confident smile she downed it, seeing his sigh of relief

and watching him relax as he took the cup from her and set it on

the sideboard.  She let him go on a while longer about his duty

and the new prayer hymnals he had composed and the great fortune

of the kingdom to have a prince on the way.  But all the time he

watched her carefully. 

  When she paled and clutched her belly, he actually managed to

appear surprised at her discomfort, "Something amiss, Lady?"

 

  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

 

  Anne sat alone in her room in the Tower.  The same room, in

fact, where she had lodged the night before her wedding to Henry.

 How cheerless it seemed now, though the room itself had not

changed.

  Outside, the loud construction of a platform interrupted her

thoughts.  Yes, they send Mark to the block tomorrow.  Poor,

harmless, innocent Mark Smeaton.

  Cromwell had tortured him for his confession, of course.  No

doubt of that.  The man had confessed to things he never even

considered doing, much less acted upon.  And he would not be the

last.

  George.  That was still hard for her to bear. Her own brother.

 The monstrous calumnies they had invented against him had been

all too eagerly supported by his bitter and jealous wife. 

Cromwell would have a lot to answer for in heaven... assuming St.

Peter would let the scoundrel through the gates at all.

  Henry Norreys had been taken away before her very eyes.  He too

would die on the morrow, and she not long after.  But Anne

managed to content herself.  She had made all her arrangements,

secured the future for her daughter.  And she did not break, did

not admit to the lies, nor grant Henry one moment's ease in this

affair.  Anne took her cue from the late Katherine of Aragon; she

would remain contumacious, proclaiming her innocence until death

severed her tongue from the rest of her body and silenced her.

  Only one last thing remained.  Her confession.  Cromwell, that

arrogant beast, would deny even that much comfort.  But she had

rights under the law, even as a condemned traitor.  So Cromwell

sent his lackey Archbishop Cranmer to her cell after much

prodding from both Master Kingston, jailer of the Tower, and

others at Court.

  Cranmer would also be used to pronounce the divorce and to make

plain the bastardy of Queen Anne's daughter Elizabeth.  Already

the Lady Mary, Henry's other daughter, had been forced to write

and sign a document declaring herself a bastard.  The way was

being cleared for the heirs of Lady Jane Seymour, who even now

was rumoured to carry the king's child in her young womb.

  Anne could not bring herself to resent her new rival. She had

learned better than that from long experience.  Resentment stews

upon resentment and leads to dark desires.  She pitied Jane

instead, for she knew the young woman would not survive Anne's

own death by very long.

  When the jailer showed the archbishop into her cell, she smiled

and told him, "So... Cromwell has decided that of all the clergy

in the land, only you are fit to hear my confession."

  "He believes me a man without conscience," he answered blandly,

showing clear distaste for his errand.  He shivered from the

cold; fearful drafts flowed through the Tower in winter and the

cold creeped into the very marrow of his bones.

  "He is wrong, my lord archbishop.  We will teach him the error

of his ways, you and I together."

  He snorted and took a seat in a chair near her.

  An hour later he sat in the same position, apparently

physically unmoved.  But his eyes had swollen and reddened.  Tear

had been flowing and they dotted the front of his otherwise

stainless robe.

  "So you do have a conscience after all," she chided him softly,

her every word and expression showing nothing but forgiveness in

her heart for the wrong he had helped do her.

  "Why did you tell me these things, Lady.  I will be troubled by

them to the end of my days," he vowed.

  "I tell you because someone had to know.  Because no one else

is fit.  And because you will keep these things to yourself until

the day you die, and thus I can receive absolution and still

protect my daughter's future."

  "No I will not forget, Lady Anne.  Nor will I ever share what

you have told me with anyone.  Not even my own confessor.  You

shame me, Lady."

  "I do not mean to, Thomas."  She smiled again.  Anne Boleyn

wore the same indulgent expression with which Katherine of Aragon

had forgiven her own murderess.

  And so we come full circle.  And so am I justly rewarded for my

own treachery.  I plotted the doom of a good and kind lady, and

now face that same doom myself.  It is justice.

  Nothing remained to her.  The French swordsman would arrive

within days-- specially selected for the task of removing her

head before the witness of the king's counsel.  Let it end soon.

 All the plans had been laid and would hold if God willed it.

  Just a short walk down the stairs, into the light and then, a

sleep which lasted forever and the end of the troubles that life

brought in multitudinous array.  Yes, let it end.  I am ready for

that at last.

  Anne didn't watch the archbishop depart, eyes still misted with

tears; she let the man slink off to his own private penance.  She

resigned herself to her fate, said a silent prayer for her

daughter and slept untroubled by the sounds of the Tower or any

fears of the hereafter.

  On the block itself, she maintained dignity to the last.  She

did not curse the king but publicly forgave him and excused his

faults as having been urged upon him by clever and ambitious men.

 Silently she channeled the last iota of her hoarded power into

one last working... a reminder for the king.

  She heard he had taken a fall recently, while out riding with

his new mistress the Lady Jane Seymour.  Not willing to be erased

utterly with her death, Anne gave the king a final present, a

last parting blow which he would hurt him to the end of his days:

that injured leg would never truly heal again. 

  She spent the last of her life on this working, set the

energies in motion and released them.  It took the last of her

energy reserves, but she did not do it selfishly for her own

pleasure or for revenge.  She did it as a reminder to the king;

he would have the site of evil and corruption before him each

time he looked upon his own leg forever.  As a reminder of what

he had done, and what he had allowed to be done in his name.

  When she let go her intent, so little of her remained that she

would have died within hours even without the aid of the

headsman.  She tried to lower her neck onto the block but settled

for basically collapsing across it.  She stretched out her arms

and all was blackness and silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   "Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against

      me: therefore I have hated it" Jeremiah 12:8 -- December-May, 1541

 

  Elizabeth ran down the corridor and hid behind a broad turkish

tapestry.  From nearby, came a sound, like the woofing of a small

dog or the snuffling of a pig.

  The animal sound drew nearer, became louder until a voice

finally shouted out, "Found you!" and the tapestry pulled back to

reveal a slightly older boy, crawling on his hands and knees like

a hunting dog and sniffing at Elizabeth's feet.

  "Oh Robin," she laughed gaily.  "You do make such a good pack-

hound."  Only Elizabeth called Robert Dudley, son of the powerful

Northumberland, by that name.  It was her private name for him

and hardly ever did she use his given name.

  She threw her arms about his neck in delight and squealed,

"Good doggie!"

  He licked her nose, still in character.

  "Yuck!" she exclaimed.  "When I'm a queen you won't do that."

  Robert Dudley looked around uneasily; no one had overheard

them.  "You mustn't say things like that, Lizzie."

  "Oh Robin, don't be such a dunce.  I will be queen, you know."

  "Shh!  I'm serious.  Right now you tread dangerous grounds.  If

anyone heard you..."

  She looked around, then she closed her eyes and listened to

something inside herself.  "No one anywhere near.  No one paying

the slightest attention to us Robin.  Cromwell is whoring again

upstairs.  Oh, and the king is on the pot."  She smiled wickedly.

  "You know I hate it when you do that," he told her for the

umpteenth time.

  "I know.  But all the same, I will be queen one day.  And on

that day you will bark like a dog if I command it."  She drew

herself up and tried to appear imposing and regal.  The pose

didn't last more than a few seconds before she broke out in

laughter.

  "Woof, woof," he told her emphatically.  Then he laughed with

her and they tumbled around behind a tapestry as other sounds

began to intrude.

  "Quiet," he hissed quickly.  Both of them drew back against the

wall and froze.  Had she been wrong somehow; was someone

eavesdropping on their conversation?  But no, Lizzie never proved

wrong.  Something else was happening.

  The sound grew louder, a woman's voice raised in fear and

anger.  The two children, concealed and silent, listened as Queen

Katherine Howard shrieked and shrieked that she must be allowed

to see her husband.  Elizabeth, the more impetuous and braver of

the two, poked her nose out to see what occurred.

  Katherine Howard came racing down the corridor, heading for the

King's Audience Hall.  But the guards came too, and they came

faster.  They caught her before she could touch the door and

clamped a hand over her mouth.  They began to drag her away, back

down the same hallway, her feet kicking uselessly behind her.

  The queen saw the young girl's face and looked at her in

desperation.  She clawed momentarily free of the soldiers and ran

to the girl.

  In a single burst of clarity, the queen knew her opportunity

might never come again.  It had to be now, or it would be never.

 Soon she would go to the Tower and soon after that she would

have her head struck off at the king's pleasure.  It could not

wait another minute, regardless of Elizabeth's.

  Queen Katherine Howard reached inside herself for the still

point, the silent voice.  She gathered in all she had, all she

had been given to keep, all she had promised to hold in trust,

all the potential of her entire life and her strength of will. 

Then she stopped abruptly for an instant; is this wrong?

  The very gifts which had caused men to seek her out, to make

her a queen, now would be the death of her.  She was not the

first either.  What good had ever come of her many gifts?  When

had she been anything other than a pawn in the desires of men who

would control her, use her for their own ends?

  But, Katherine Howard had sworn to do this-- promised it on her

life.  Could she fail to deliver now?  Now, when her own death

loomed as a certainty before her and all hope of some good coming

out of all this wickedness might be irretrievably lost?  Did she

have the right to deny this child her heritage, her inheritance?

  In another second she made her decision.  Katherine Howard put

out her hand and touched Elizabeth on her forehead and like

lightning, sent the full force of everything she had garnered and

drawn out of her own dire extremity through that physical link

and into the child.

  Elizabeth fell to the floor.  Those who witnessed it thought

the gentle queen had for some reason struck the young girl; they

thought it a purely hysterical gesture and gave it no more

thought.

  They dragged the screaming woman away and made ready her

transportation to the Tower.  Elizabeth remained on the stone

floor, stunned and unmoving.  In normal times, a princess of the

realm would never be so dreadfully attended or neglected.  But in

the Court of King Henry the two girl children Elizabeth and Mary

had passed from legitimate heirs to bastards (and back) so many

times that people had lost track, and few had any love for either

princess.

  Robert stepped out from behind the tapestry and went to his

friend.  He lifted her head, brushed her hair out of her eyes and

tapped her on the cheek gently until those eyes opened.

  "Still so sure you want to be a queen?" he asked her seriously.

  She looked back at him through a fog, barely hearing his words.

 She lifted her head a moment and replied just as seriously,

"That part can't be helped, but I'm not so sure I like the idea

of having a king..." and after another hesitant breath she added,

"I do not think I will ever marry."

  She passed out.

  Robert arranged to have Elizabeth taken to the quarters she

shared with her half-sister, Mary.  The older sister would

dutifully tend to her sibling-- though she made it no secret she

did not care for Elizabeth.  Mary knew only duty; duty to heaven;

duty to her country; duty to her sovereign lord.  She knew it all

too well, for at the age of eleven she had been forced by her

father to write a letter proclaiming her own bastardy.

  Mary knew duty.  She would tend Elizabeth competently, if with

an uninvolved spirit and a total lack of compassion or true

concern.  It was simply her "Christian Duty" so she would do it.

  Robert left the young princess with her sister and went to seek

out some dinner.

  The girl who greeted him the next morning did not seem like the

same person.  Elizabeth had grown intense overnight, studious and

careful.  A new Elizabeth stood in place of his former friend,

quietly watching everything but saying very little.

  "What did she do to you?" he asked so many times those first

few weeks.  She refused to share it with him. 

  It nearly drove him mad, this new unexpected wedge come between

them.  The day Katherine Howard went to the block, Elizabeth

refused to even speak with him, or with anyone.  She remained

inconsolable.  She wore black, despite the king's preference that

she not do so, for months after.  When forbidden to wear it in

public she simply remained in her chambers.  Thus Robert saw her

little, and when she did allow him to visit her spirits seemed

beyond any cheer he might offer.

  A few weeks after the death of the queen, Robert's family went

to spend a month touring their country estates.  Normally his

mother and he remained at Court during these inspections but this

year they were being dragged along.  Robert refused to allow

himself any happiness at the thought of a month footloose in the

country with everyone too busy to watch him properly.  The image

of Lizzie haunted him; he felt totally at a loss.

  One night, sound asleep, a sound from outside seemed to wake

him.  Without knowing why he dressed in silence, climbed out his

window and over the hedge-rows, heading out past the tanner's

shed to the wide fields of grain on his family's estate.  They

had only arrived a few days ago, but to Robert it felt like a

second home.

  He'd quickly become familiar with most of the workers, the

smith, the tanner and others, who resided on the large expanse. 

He knew the birds to whistle at and had a wide acquaintance with

most of the trees.  Even in the dark he had no trouble making his

way to the edge of the property, where a slender rill from a

dying river still marked the border.

  He found Lizzie sitting on a log, bare feet dangling in the icy

water at a point just astride the shallow stream.  Around her,

but never so close as to be an annoyance, brightly-coloured bugs

winked on and off with an inner iridescence.  Behind the young

girl, birds had gathered. Many birds.  They all sat quietly

around her like an audience... humming or trilling softly to one

another.

  Robert didn't react.  He sat down next to her.

  He had a weighty pile of questions for her.  Does anyone know

you are here?  How did you even get here?  What are you doing

here?  How did I know you were here?  And a private grin as he

thought, And can you possibly tell your glow-in-the-dark friends

to tone it down a bit before someone comes to investigate

thinking there is a fire?

  An answer to all of these rang out in his mind, I love you. 

The birds hummed agreement but the flickering insects seemed to

dim and scatter somewhat.

  He turned to the girl, her long auburn tresses neatly tucked

into the hood of her riding garb, "That doesn't answer me."

  Yes it does.

  He thought for a moment.  Perhaps it did, after all.  He

thought a moment and to himself he asked how she could be doing

this.

  It was a gift.  From my mother, and another who loved her well.

  "Well, three times is no coincidence.  You've been reading my

thoughts."

  And sending you my own.  I am getting better at it the more I

practice.  And I have been practicing many things lately.  There

are many forces abroad, and other voices to hear than those of

men and women.

  "Umm... could we do it the old-fashioned way?  You're beginning

to give me a headache."

 "Oh," she said simply.  "I hadn't thought of that.  It will take

time to for you to get used to it."  If you want to get used to

it she added silently to herself.

  He nodded.  With her, he could get used to a lot.

  Robert never understood what had forged this inescapable bond

between them.  He had always had felt it, all his life.  It might

have related to them both being two castoff children at Court,

too often left to their own devices.  It may likewise have been

the murmured suspicions that Robert's mother had cuckolded his

father with some Scottish laird.  At odd times, and to various

people, it seemed sometimes that he and Elizabeth were both

bastards, despite both having parents.  Their mutual loneliness,

need and humiliation had drawn them together.

  But somehow it went much deeper than that.

  His earliest memories recalled Elizabeth, almost as if he had

known her before he ever set eyes upon her.  Like a vision or a

dream he had in his mother's womb.... Elizabeth.  First, last and

always Elizabeth.

  She was still connected to him!  Robert felt her in his mind

just then-- reading his private thoughts and experiencing his

emotions.  He nearly jumped up and ran from her.

  She had embarrassed him.  She felt it first-hand through the

momentary linkage of their minds and had become embarrassed

herself.  She realized she had been rude, overstepped.  Such

heavy-handed thoughtless blundering did not suit a sometime-

princess of the realm.

  She could even sense him sensing her sensing of her

embarrassment over his embarrassment... It was all too much.

  Something inside Robert continued to cringe and balk at the

sheer intimacy of the contact; he tried to sever the connection

in near panic.  Sensing this, Elizabeth slowly withdrew the

exploring tendrils she'd sent out to him.

  He managed a half-smile.  She tried not to look guilty.

 While both of them acted as adults around most of Henry's Court

and affected the proper airs and manners expected of them on cue,

both remained at heart immature adolescents.  Neither of them

knew limits or boundaries.

  "I didn't mean to..." she started.

  He frowned.  Witch.  Liar.

  She thought, You can tell when I am lying.

  He nodded.

  "Then only truth between us from now on, Robin".

  He nodded again.  "It's still your turn.".  He let his mind go

blank... already she had seen too much of his core, read too

deeply into his soul.  In his mind he created a wall of mortared

stones making a tomb of all his secrets and hidden fancies.

  "Now you hide your thoughts from me?" she replied petulantly. 

"Oh very well... I did mean to look.  I wanted to know.

  "I shouldn't have done it.  But I'm only a girl.  And even

though I'm a bastard half the time I still have to be a princess

the whole time and I get nervous too...

  "I wanted to know how you really felt about me."

  That much at least he could understand.  Perhaps they both had

more maturity than either credited the other.  Certainly they

suffered from the same malady-- the infernal doubt and desire for

acceptance from others.  But still... Elizabeth held something

back from him.  Something furtive remained in her eyes, and her

lips had half a smile only.

  She had some purpose.  The mental intrusion could only have

been round one, and more lay in the balance than his compromised

privacy and wounded feelings.  Robert accepted her apology, and

waited patiently for her to explain further.  She did not make

him wait more than a few seconds.

  "Many things are happening now," she began.  "Many more things

will happen soon.  Things which will astound the world-- I mean

it.

  "God's Blood, Robin!  The world is going to become an

interesting place at last!"  Her eyes flashed with delight, or

perhaps desire.

  Robert had been caught off guard by her sudden animation, as

well as her use of King Henry's favourite curse.  He laughed in

the face of her sudden self-importance.  "So, you see the future

now too?  Determined to live up to people's gossip are you?"

  She knew just what he meant.  She had heard the stories; you

couldn't be anywhere near the retinue and fail to overhear.  She

heard the whisperings.  Elizabeth... the bastard child of the

witch Boleyn.  Daughter of a jackal; progeny of a conniving

traitor who had summoned demons to her bed and mated with Satan

regularly.  Could the daughter be anything more or less than

spawn of a vile witch's demonic union with the forces of blight

and evil?

  Elizabeth the bastard.  The witch.  Elizabeth who should be

cast out, or one day locked away.  She went silent and folded her

arms across her chest.  What if Robin looked at her the same way

in some private corner of his mind she'd failed to see?  What if

he too feared and despised her?

  Her silence became unendurable and Robert finally said,

"Alright Lizzie... out with it."

  Out loud, or in your mind?

  "Out loud, for the love of Peter.  My eyes feel like someone is

sticking embroidery needles through them from inside my brain

every time you do that.  No more please, not just now.

  "Talk to me, Lizzie."

  She nodded.  She told him to close his eyes for a moment and

when he hesitated she smiled openly and offered him reassurance.

 When his lids had closed she placed a finger over each gently

for just a moment.  Drawing on instincts and abilities she barely

suspected or understood she slowly placed the image of a light-

green healing light into her mind, into her hands, into the

fingertips and beyond.  She sent that light, that sourceless

warmth and tenderness through the newly discovered physical link

she had forged in merely touching Robert, and felt him relax

almost at once.

  In a moment she was certain.  He felt better; she had done the

proper thing.  She could feel it as certainly as the ground

beneath her or the darkly hanging firmament overhead.

  Robert opened his eyes, relief clear on his face and marvel

showing in his gaze.  She had eased his pain and it had flowed

away as if she'd simply willed it out of existence.  He

understood in that moment that she had only shown him the merest

glimpse of what she had learned, the tremendous power which now

waxed within her.  He could still sense the connection between

them but no longer did pain accompany the sensation.

  You really ARE a witch, he thought seriously.

  Elizabeth nodded.  She longed to tell it all to him now, to

relate her private visions of the paths she could see stretching

out before her and him and the entire world.  One path led to a

golden future.  This she called "The true way".  But that path

lay surrounded on all sides by other paths-- paths which seemed

easier and more comfortable for Elizabeth personally, but which

ultimately led to war and ruin and terrible sufferings she could

only perceive without truly understanding.  All these things she

saw, and had to share with someone before she began to lose her

sanity, isolated by private visions reserved for her alone.

  She had chosen Robert for this, but something in his manner

still kept her at bay.  She could see the way he looked at her

now, the awe and fear and silent confusion in his eyes.  Was she

the same girl he knew and loved?  Was she something different? 

Some monster or doom foretold which had now come into its

inheritance?

  For his part, Robert had not failed to notice her scrutiny.

  Always he had known this young girl, this teasing temptress and

scampering menace.  She flung mud at him in the fall, tumbled him

down hills and into tall grasses in the spring; she'd once

pitched him head-first into a swampy hole behind the labyrinths

of hedge-rows cleverly fashioned by gardeners and left him a

sopping mess while she giggled unable to contain herself-- upon

regaining his footing he feigned a cramp and when he moved

forward to assist him he tossed her into the very same pool.

  He recalled all those things as he stood and watched her

examine him.  But now there seemed something unfathomable about

this girl he had known all his life.  Had she become a stranger?

 Did something alien no inhabit her and control her?  She played

with what all common people agreed were "dark forces" and could

that lead to any good?

  His curiosity he held in check.  She needed him to be strong

for some reason and he knew it as surely as he knew he loved her.

 So the questions in his mind he silenced.  What has changed you?

 How has this happened?  Whence came these gifts she used so

freely and with such seeming precision?  He desperately tried not

to let those things come to the forefront of his mind.

  And what about the gleam in her eyes when she spoke of the

shining future she saw?  Had that been greed? Was it wicked?

Immoral?  Would the future shine for everyone, for him?  Or would

it glitter and glisten for her alone... like some toy in her

collection?

  Aloud he said, "You are in terrible, terrible danger".

  She nodded once.

  "They will burn you if they find out."

  "And would you help them light the pyre, Robin.  Would you?"

  He stood there nonplussed.  What could she mean?  He was her

friend; he loved her, protected her from everyone who meant her

harm (and even her own capricious nature) when he could.  He

couldn't think to speak.

  She asked, "Robin what would you do?  Would you burn me?  Would

you throw the brand on my pyre and watch my eyes pop from the

blazing heat?"

  Her voice, usually so steady, cracked now.  Robert could see

the tears welling in the corners of her eyes.  He went to her and

put his arms around her in anguish.  How could she even think of

such a thing?  How could she ever imagine him in such a terrible

role?

  "Never!" he swore, meaning it even if it cost him his very

soul.

  "But I saw it Robin.  I saw it."

  "It wasn't real," he insisted, wiping her eyes with his sleeve.

 "Now... tell me what you saw."  He held her to him softly and

waited.  He repeated silently in his mind, Tell me what you saw.

  She backed away from him slowly, composed herself.  In a most

masculine fashion she unceremoniously snorted loudly and

unplugged her nose on the surrounding vegetation.  Several of the

birds which remained just out of reached clucked and cheeped in

annoyance at her.

  "Oh very dignified..." Robert chided softly.

  Without further preamble she told him all of it.  "We were to

be married...  You and I.  It was years from now.

  "And there were many objections.  Northumberland and the

Seymours and Lionel and some of the others all jockeying for

position.  My Sister Mary sat on the throne-- she arranged our

marriage because advisors had warned her of plots being laid in

my name to put me on the throne, and she wanted me married off to

someone she had many holds over."

  Robert thought about that.  It sounded fine so far.  All

reasonable and true enough.  Never did he doubt (if Elizabeth

would have him) he would wed her one day.  Also, she had stated

his family's precipitous standing with great care and precision--

foolish management by his ancestors had cost his family's estate

heavily and indeed they were beholden to the Royal Good Will for

all they had.

  Robert Dudley knew all too well the fleeting nature of trust

between a monarch and one of the "Great Families" such as his

own.  His clan had risen and fallen, been heroes and traitors too

many times to track any longer.  And, as always in a nation of

monarchs and princes, his entire family's fortune (and even their

lives) hung upon the will, the charity, and the total whims of

the reigning monarch.

  Elizabeth continued telling him her vision.  "I had never told

you, though.  About all of this...  I never found the strength or

the trust to do it.

  "And then one day, you saw something.  Something I haven't made

yet, or never will make, or which will make itself and then come

to me or..." her words began to jumble on upon another in her

haste to make plain the vision she had glimpsed.

  Lizzie, he thought clearly and slowly, calm down and tell me in

order. 

  She stopped ranting, reigned in her thoughts and slowly began

again.

  "It was a future.  One where I didn't tell you I could see

things and hear things and... well all the rest.  One where I

never shared with you that I was..." she trailed off.

  Neither of them risked saying it aloud again.  Robert asked her

to go on.

  "Anyway, you didn't know.  But in this future I had some things

around, trappings which led you eventually to discover it on your

own.  And you did not understand.

  "When it came time for us to marry, your family approached you

in another one of their endless political intrigues and forced

you to reveal these things you had learned.  They had you

denounce me before the Queen, my sister.

  "I went to the pyre.  I burned forever and ever.

  "To prove your loyalty and lack of complicity in my evils, you

threw the first brand soaked in tallow yourself to trigger the

blaze."

  She said all this calmly and softly, as if speaking of distant

peoples and fictional events totally unconnected to either of

them.  Robert could hear a could, almost fatalistic acceptance of

the evils of the world in her voice. But he also heard her fear,

no matter how bravely she tried to suppress it.

  He digested what she had said.  This little princess, this

maniacal tag-along who had pulled his hair and teased him most of

his life... a witch.  A seer and oracle.

  But this time she was wrong.  She had to be wrong or he could

not live another day.  He would never let such a fate encompass

her!

  He told her, "It could never happen".

  "It did happen; I saw it happen.  It will happen..."  Then, not

so positively she added, "It could happen."

  "It could never happen" he repeated firmly.  "You got it wrong,

Lizzie.  Look again".

   This reaction startled her.  Got it wrong?  Look again  What

good could that possibly do?

  But even as she had the thought, a small section of her mind

began to expand and search the pathways again.  The future

unfolded like a child's kite catching the wind.

  It had gone!  That path no longer remained open!

 She saw new paths now.  Many paths which had never before

existed until that very moment.  And the other paths?  Some of

the ones of ruin and pain and conflagration had simply melted

away like shadows in the morning or the last snows of winter when

spring made its annual debut.

  In anxiety she searched for the "true way", for that golden

path which lead to the harmonious and bright future she had seen

as possible.  She gave an audible sigh when she found it, still

there unadulterated and awaiting her attention and the destiny of

the world.

  "You really are insufferable," she told Robert.

  "I?" he protested.  I, lady, am your knight!"  He got down on

one knee in a mock chivalrous salute, then rose and bowed deeply

with a flourish.

  Elizabeth was sorely tempted to circle behind him and give him

a ringing kick on his bottom, but for once she didn't act on her

impulse to tease or tumble him.

  She agreed that the path which led to him tossing brands on her

personal pyre no longer existed.  She also admitted some

confusion.  "I thought I had it all mapped out.  I thought I had

it figured.  Now... I just don't know for certain."

  He smiled.  "You sound like my father; he talks like that at

least once a day.   Though I rarely listen to much he or the rest

of my family have to say."  Then he added seriously, "And I

certainly won't be lighting any pyres for them."

  She shook her head vigourously.  "That path no longer exists. 

There are paths I see now.  New paths.  Many are convoluted and

criss-crossing.  There are new deviations.  Most are not at all

what I would like, but..."

  He cut her off with a very adult observation, "What in this

life is, Lizzie?

  They talked more.  On into the early morning hours she told him

of the things she had seen and felt and what she suspected about

herself, and the world in which they both lived.  Elizabeth told

Robert about the silent thunder which had hit her as Katherine

Howard had infused into her the legacy of power which had been

stored and garnered for so long.  She spoke of how it felt to be

washed aside in a tumult as a wave of energy so strong she could

not begin to understand its limits was somehow transferred to her

like a border taking up residence within her brain and her heart.

  She told Robert of the great love her mother had given to her

in that gift, and of the curse Boleyn had laid upon Henry's foot.

  Robert blanched briefly at that.  He thought of curses and the

old words of the common folk rang in his ears.  Witches!  Evil! 

Demons!  Immoral spawn of satan!

  But just as quickly his revulsion and superstition faded in the

light of memory.  Yes, Robert recalled the pleasant smiling

queen, and how all men's hands had turned so cruelly against her

and for no reason other than the King was a swine-- something no

man could safely admit aloud in England.  Robert could remember

his brother Guilford speaking often of the many kindnesses and

stolen sweetmeats which had passed to him from Anne Boleyn, and

also how cruelly the men at Court treated the new queen right up

until they had her head struck off her body.

  If Boleyn had caused the inflammation in King Henry's leg which

defied all medical efforts to succor and heal... well it was but

a pittance, a minimal return for what she owed the man.  And a

pittance compared to what King Henry would owe to God for

sacrificing an innocent woman on the altar of his vanity and

lust.

  Elizabeth saw him make these mental assessments, still half-

felt them through the slender mental link which remained between

them.  She shared his momentary doubt, then the moment when they

passed from his mind and he was again waiting for her to continue

her story.  She journeyed onward though some of the things which

had happened to her in the time since they had last been

together.

  She spoke of her growing understanding of what she called "Life

Force".  She spoke of the memories which had passed to her along

with the power when Katherine Howard had forever changed her

nature with a clear burst of pure spirit/energy which could never

be equalled or even properly explained.

  In sifting the deeded memories of Boleyn and Howard, Elizabeth

realized that the two women had perceived the energies and forces

available to them in very different ways.  To the simple

Katherine it had seemed a religious and divine spirit, like a

confidant come to ward her from the evils of the world.  Anne

Boleyn had perceived it to be like a blanket or cloak she wore to

insulate herself from the prying eyes and minds of others.

  To Elizabeth it appeared as a greenish-blue cloud of fog which

arose from and permeated anything and everything she could see--

with only one exception.  The "Life Force" existed in all things,

save for the dead and those things made of iron and fashioned by

the hands of men.

  If she had been older, or better tutored in such arcane

practices, Elizabeth might have realized she had postulated the

oversoul, or a collective gestalt connecting and containing all

things living and breathing on the planet.  If she had lived in a

time of modern devices and reason she might have thought on the

positive and negative balances of such forces, the kinetic

energies and the potential energies awaiting release and

transmutation.  But despite the obvious advantage of having the

memories and life experiences of a pair of adults contained

within her, she remained a child still in many ways.  She could

not know it all, or sometimes even notice how much she had missed

in her haste to explore and understand a subject.

  Elizabeth told Robert all those things.  She described them as

best she could, using her own words and avoiding the vast store

of knowledge which sprang into her mind whenever she consulted

her inner voice.

  She told Robert of her first visions of the cloud, the force of

life in nearly all things.  She told him in pain and anguish how

she had accidentally drawn the greenish-blue fuzziness from a

small bird which landed on the parapet as she sat alone in the

evening air just a few nights after Katherine Howard went to the

block.

  The bird had looked at her and sung so sweetly.  She wanted to

know it better, to sample its life and feel what it felt as it

soared and sang its life away.  She reached out to the force

within the small creature, drew it toward her to examine its

essence.

  It had died instantly.

  Robert felt her shame and horror.  He had noticed all the birds

around them, still humming softly as if in approval of all she

told him.  Now he realized that they were in part a "penance" and

a reminder, more than admirers or pets of hers.  Lizzie blamed

herself for her hasty childish action, for killing the beautiful

bird as it sang to her in innocence.  Clearly she had decided

that from now on she would take great care to preserve even the

smallest of creatures.

  In fact, he could now hear a small part of her mind singing

telepathically to the creatures of the forests and the air.  Be

well.  Be safe and protected the soundless song promised as it

evanesced into the night.

  After the incident with the bird, Lizzie told Robert she swore

off all further use of her powers.  For nearly a fortnight.  The

truth of her own nature and the power contained within her simply

could not be pushed aside any longer than that.  Dreams of other

lives and choices not made and showering sparkles of exploding

energies coming from within her haunted nearly that entire period

until she once again began to use and channel that which lay

beneath her outer appearance.

  She had great strength now, she came to understand.  Amazing

power and vitality.  It charged her up and buoyed her every

footfall.  But the power could not be left idle; it demanded use.

 To sit atop that huge reserve and not expend any of it invited a

terrible building of stresses which no one could ever hope to

long contain.

  Elizabeth told him how it had come to her that many accused of

witchcraft had been caught for just these reasons.  They had been

unable to forbear from using the powers they had-- no matter what

the threat or risk of discovery.  The weeks of headaches and

nightmares she endured had convinced the Elizabeth of the need to

rapidly learn to channel the forces she contained into

constructive purpose.  Left alone they would consume her utterly.

  She had to learn to moderate and use this bright flame of light

which burned within, or it would slowly consume her from the

inside out.

  So, once she got over the pain of having killed the bird her

experiments continued.  Her vision improved as she stretched to

find its prescient and preternatural limits.  She learned to see

and understand the essence of life within herself, and to

experiment with that as well.

  Never did she try to raise the greenish-blue cloud entirely

from her own body, for she knew now this would mean her death. 

But she was able to ease the other part, the seemingly invisible

but complex intertwined silvery thread of her own awareness out

of her physical form.

  The first time she tried it, the fear of becoming forever

disassociated and becoming a lost and wandering thing had snapped

her instantly back into her own mind and body.  But with slow

practice she eventually learned to lift that portion of her

awareness out of her body at will.  She discovered she could will

herself to float up and out and beyond her body; she could even

look somehow without eyes and see her own body below her,

ostensibly sleeping.  She managed to keep out the cacophony of

other spirits and creatures and to free her conscious mind to

soar among the planes of possibility-- and yet always to keep

hold of that slender silver thread which led back to her own

body.

  She spent very little time investigating the matters of the men

and women at Court.  Oh, to be sure she had spied upon a few of

them, witnessed some thoughts and recollections profoundly

unsuitable for any normal child.  But after her initial curiosity

about the petty dealings of those adults around her wore off, the

study of more important things began in earnest.

  She'd also tried some of the tricks she'd heard witches could

perform: levitation, breathing life into inanimate objects,

controlling animal familiars and so on.  Aside from charming a

few birds and squirrels into her hand she had pretty much failed

at all three tasks.  It occurred to her that much of what people

thought they knew about witches couldn't be trusted and had a lot

more to do with superstition than fact.

  She went about her experiments with the clinical precision of a

surgeon, and sometimes with a casual disregard for possible

consequences which only a child can have.  She regularly lifted

her consciousness from her body and went and travelled with the

deer of the greensward or tried to learn the ancient language of

the trees.  But it never occurred to her that it might be

possible for other forces, less innocuous energies to come upon

her body while she was absent and vulnerable and wreak

considerable mischief on her.

  Robert pointed that fact out to her as she explained some of

the experiments she'd attempted.    She seemed to make a mental

note of that without halting her narrative.  The moon set and the

sun began to rise as she spoke on.

  She told Robert of the snatches of distant whispers she could

sometimes hear-- like the tinkling of far off bells-- and how

these whispers nearly always proved to be the truth.  She told

him everything she could think of about these new gifts she had

inherited so suddenly and unexpectedly.

  Finally she widened the bandwidth of the mental connection

between them so he could start to see and feel and perceive some

of the realities and future paths she charted.  He seemed stunned

by this, and also flattered she had chosen to share these things

and this incredible gift with him.

  She pulled away from him at last and eased back out of his mind

and thoughts.  She folded her arms across her chest and stood

stock-still but seemed to be on the verge of starting to shake. 

Like a trapped animal about to lash out, she studied Robert

intently.

  "And now that you know it all," she said, "what do you intend

to do, Robin?"

  Robert thought a long while.  He tried to form some sort of

intelligent comment.  Years of doctrine and religious admonitions

warred within him; superstitions fought a silent battle against

his reason and simple common sense.  Lizzie had always been

strange, not like any girl or any other person.  Lizzie the

strange.

  Lizzie the witch.   Lizzie who sees the future and communes

with wayward spirits of the earth. Did she summon the devil in

unholy sabbats and drink the blood of infants as all the stories

about witches suggest?  Robert nearly laughed aloud-- the very

idea simply too silly to contemplate seriously.

  And now that he knew all this... what would he do?  Would he

run to his parents and have them send for the priests?  A

scouring?  An exorcism?  The pyre she had envisioned for herself

loomed in his mind as a constant reminder of what lay down such a

road.  Who would he tell?  Who did he want to tell? 

  Why... no one at all!  Who had any right to know?  This secret

had two minds holding it safe and surely that served as the best

answer. 

  He looked again at Lizzie as she stood there in silence judging

his reaction to all she had imparted.  Not a monster.  Nor a

demon.  Just Lizzie.  My friend.  The tease and the scamp.

  She stared at him with an intensity unavailable to most people.

 She said not a word, but studied his every glance and movement

and waited for his reply-- waited as if both their lives depended

upon it.

  Danger! Robert's mind said to him, or was it her mind sending

the thought.  So hard to tell suddenly.  But what danger?  what

source of peril?  then he had it... it dawned on him almost

instinctively.

  Robert thought for a minute, putting himself into Elizabeth's

place.  He thought of the type of person who had surrounded her

all her life, the backstabbing place-seekers in Henry's Court. 

He knew the danger in which she stood, and surely so did she.  He

considered the choices he would have had to make in her place...

what was it she had said?  That in her mind's eye she saw him

throwing the first brand to light her pyre?

  Robert understood now.  He felt her weighing his movements and

expressions and his very life in those moments.  Robert nearly

succumbed to fear.  He understood precisely the choice she now

called upon him to make, and the possible result if he made the

wrong decision.  It stunned him to think that this slender girl

he had chased across the chessboard floors of the Great Keep and

splashed water on in summertime now held his future in her

delicate hands.

  He knew from what she had said that if she so chose, she could

lift the unseen fog of life from his body and leave him an

unmarked stiff corpse in the morning air with no explanation or

apology given.  He also knew to his very soul that this was the

last thing she ever wanted to be forced to do, and that only her

fear for herself and for the "true way" she envisioned had forced

this upon her.

  Without reservation he made his decision.  He walked up to her

and confronted her icy inquisitive stare.  "God's death, Lizzie.

 You don't ever make it easy do you?"

  She reached out to him and embraced him.  She leaned back to

meet his eyes.  Robert nodded his silent assent and she probed

beyond his soulful orbs and surface thoughts to read the deepest

truth within him at his core.  It only took a moment and she

knew. 

 Robert had decided; Robert loved Elizabeth now and forever no

matter what she became or what spirits she might consort with in

the darkness.  Robert could only be her friend, her trusted

confidant, and whatever else she required of him. Robert could

not work contrary to her will.  He refrained from judging her and

did not think her evil.

  Robert no longer needed any answers from her.  The questions of

a few hours ago (the ones she hadn't answered) no longer mattered

or the answers too obvious to bother about.  Does anyone know you

are here?  How did you even get here?  How did I know you were

here and why did I come?  What is it you want?  He had all his

answers.  She loved him.  She had come to tell him important

things, to gauge his reaction and to make a choice.  To determine

the future-- both their futures.

  "And I wanted to show you my path to the golden times," she

told him aloud.

  "Yes, that too.  Your touch becomes lighter all the time; I

barely felt that one."

  "But the path to that time is no longer what I envisioned. 

There has been a change, a shift of some kind.  It is not always

clear to me at the best of times."

  "It was a night of great moment and decision, my Queen," he

told her.  "No doubt the heavens and the earth will take some

time to adjust, even as we will."

  The young girl blushed.  This was the first time Robert or

indeed anyone had ever addressed her thus.  One day the whole

world would call her that, she felt innately certain on that

score.  In nearly all the paths she could follow, she saw her

ascension to the throne after her sister Mary, and Robin right

there at her side.

  "Your wayward path will straighten itself out and return to its

desired form," Robert assured her, "even if you have to bend the

whole world to make it appear straight by comparison."

  She laughed hard.  Such presumption.  But he spoke the truth of

course.  "Oh Robin, you see things so much more clearly than I. 

Would that I had your eyes... Of course the path will correct

itself.  Or we shall fix it ourselves.  If only I saw with your

eyes," she repeated.

  "They are yours," he told her, "use them as you will."

  She thought about that.  Use his eyes?  How could she... but

then of course she could!  "Do you mean this Robin?  Really mean

it?"

  "Of course I mean it," he replied instantly, daring her to

doubt him now.  He had a right to some small indignation; he had

listened to her entire tale without blanching or running off to

his confessor to seek absolution.  He proved himself up to any

task she set for him.

  "You see too many things, my Queen.  Things which might never

come to pass, but are nonetheless awful to bear.  I would have

you see better sights."

  She searched him for any last sign of hesitation, but Robert

stood fast and stared deeply into her eyes as if he had survived

some great arduous physical challenge and surpassed the limits of

his own beliefs which formerly restrained him.  He had walked

through the bonfire himself, and come out on the other side clean

and hale and willing.  Just as she had seen into his soul, he had

felt hers and knew her to her innermost heart as well as he knew

himself.  Whatever Elizabeth required of him he would do, and do

gladly.

  She sent forth a sliver of herself, a silvered strand of her

consciousness.  Slender as a piece of summer grass, it snaked

forth from her mind until it found him, entered him, found an

anchor in his brain behind his eyes.  Slowly it became a solid

connection, a relay like a lifeline between the two.  Elizabeth

slowly sent forth just the smallest amount of her awareness

through the passive link... and was suddenly looking at herself.

  It worked!  She saw out of his eyes as surely and plainly as he

himself did!!!  For a brief moment they merged, shared total

consciousness together.  Then she withdrew, and with a slight

pull or shudder found herself again looking at Robert through her

own tired eyes.  But the connection remained; they had bonded in

a permanent and unfathomable new way.  When she wanted to, she

would be able to see through him, feel what he felt and her what

he heard-- no matter where he might be.  If he followed the

Portuguese trade route to the Indes and sailed to the very edge

of the world, she would still know where he was and what he did

if she desired.

  Without another word the two turned and walked towards the

manor house where Robert's sleeping family would soon be moving

about.  The birds scattered as they left with plaintive or happy

songs.  The bugs had left sometime before the dawn to avoid

becoming someone's breakfast.

  Elizabeth quit his side about halfway to the main gate; she had

to return to Henry's Court before someone missed her.

  For one last moment they stood together and embraced.

  "I will never tell a single soul," he vowed to her as she left.

  "I know, Robin. I can see that... now."

  She turned and with a last mental touch they parted.

  A nagging thought occurred to him and he called after her,

"Lizzie?  You wouldn't really have killed me last night if it had

gone some other way would you?"

  She laughed.

  After a moment he laughed too.  And he continued walking home.

  Of course she would have.  His mental connection with her made

that totally beyond doubt.  He might have done the very same

thing if their places had been reversed.

  She had taken this risk, lured him out of his home into the

cool night air to make her stand.  Too many paths of her vision

led to futures where she and Robert had ended up hurting each

other.  So Elizabeth had come to kill or die, to lay herself at

his mercy or leave him at her mercy and to make a choice rather

than wait to be wounded later by seemingly random but predictable

events.

  Robert sneaked past the cottages of the waking farmhands and

stableworkers milling about on the property and made his way back

unseen to his room before any of his family arose.  He knew full

well that he had passed through the fire in the last hours, that

his body could have simply been discovered face-down in the

little rivulet where Lizzie had dangled her feet and no one would

have ever been any the wiser.  He half suspected the birds and

other small animals surrounding them all night had been warding

the spot where they spoke and insuring the area remained free of

any prying eyes so that Lizzie could make her decision one way or

the other.

  In truth, she had also been in danger.  Robert could have risen

in shock from all the things she had told him and before she knew

his intent he might have throttled the life out of her and left

her by that same rivulet.  Who would fault anyone for the death

of a witch?  He also knew that Elizabeth had seen that path too,

among all the others, when she chose to confront him.

  Just like a silly girl, she had missed the obvious truth: he

loved her with all his soul.  Beyond choice, beyond life, beyond

reason.  Robert would have chosen to drown himself in a scullery

pail, rather than ever harm her either by design or even by

accident.  Elizabeth was his little sister, and his big sister. 

His friend and the keeper of his soul and his deepest darkest

secrets.

  As for her powers?  Well that was surely just another part of

her.  It would require some adjustment, but hardly a harrowing or

major reshaping.  Just another part of her, not good or evil in

itself.  She would require his love, his patience, his

understanding.  She would have it.

  If only she had used heart more instead of listening to the

doubts speaking in her head she would have known the way Robert

felt about her.  She didn't really need to confront him in the

dark and frighten the both half out of their respective wits.  He

had always been hers to do with as she desired, if she had but

known it.

  Yet the evening hadn't been wasted.  Dangerous ugly paths had

been closed off.  New paths now spanned in the distance.  And the

two of them shared a new intimacy undreamed of by others.  They

now had a union, a bond of kinship that exceeded the nature of

words to relate.  He could still feel Elizabeth as she made her

way back home, feel her pleasure at their shared connection.

  That in itself was worth anything-- worth more than the entire

world and everything and everyone on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   "...make speed to depart, lest he overtake us suddenly and bring

        evil upon us..." II Samuel 15:14 -- 1553

  "Never!  I will not!" feverished shouts came from within the

chambers.  Those who attended without had grown used to such

nightly events, though that did not stop the servants from

whispering about the disturbances when out of earshot of the

nobles at Court.

  The doctors who came and went weekly had various names for the

wasting illness which afflicted the young king, but the more

superstitious members of Court had their own theories-- the

current gossip in the kitchens said Edward was possessed of an

evil spirit.  The shouts from the tormented boy's rooms nightly

seemed to confirm that prognosis in the minds of many.  Others

spoke in whispers about strange events and symptoms they had seen

in Edward years before this latest illness had settled upon him.

 The inability of any of the doctors to aid the king simply

confirmed the superstitions of those whispering; doctors cannot

be expected to combat the wiles of Satan or his minions.

  All of Edward's troubles seemed to begin around the time of his

ninth birthday, shortly before his father, King Henry VIII, had

finally died of his own corpulence.  Edward had taken ill late in

the evening-- some kind of odd fever no one had seen before. 

Edward spent the night and a few that followed raving in sleep as

his fever burned and threatened to consume him completely.  It

was deemed miraculous when he suddenly awoke on the fourth day in

apparent good health with no memory of being ill.

  That had set people to talking.  Many people credited his

amazing recovery to the will of God and the "Divine right Of

Kings"; less charitable tongues wagged that it was witchcraft, or

that Henry had made a deal with the devil to save his sickly

heir.

  A few months later, Edward's father died and he ascended the

throne of England at the age of nine.  Considered too young to

rule a great nation on his own, he was always under the watchful

eye of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who controlled much

of what went on at court secretly-- while nursing complex plans

of his own.  For a while it seemed Edward VI would grow to be a

wise ruler who might overcome the desires of the ambitious men

who surrounded him.

  But shortly after Henry's death, his son Edward began to sicken

slowly.  In a few months it became clear to all that Edward VI

was unlikely to live to manhood.  Something was eating at the boy

from within, slowly scraping away at him like a knife dipping

into a bowl of butter in a vain attempt to cover the bread of the

entire world.

  By age twelve King Edward had been moved permanently to private

apartments, and what few appointments his doctors and protectors

permitted him were taken from his bed.  By his thirteenth

birthday the more ambitious men at Court had winnowed away the

competition and virtually taken over the kingdom.  Of these men,

John Dudley was perhaps the finest, as well as the worst.

  On this evening, a short time after Edward's fifteenth birthday

had passed, Dudley sat in the fore-chamber of the apartments

which had been set aside for Edward in his extremity.  The room

lacked any significant majesty or grandeur; little more than a

round table big enough for three or four to sit at, a few chairs,

a dresser and a few stacks of books and rolled documents near the

far wall.  John Dudley didn't require the trappings of a king to

know he ran the country.

  If he needed to see such trappings, he had but to look to his

left through the open door that led to the rear room of the royal

apartments, where Edward lay sleeping fitfully and sweating in

his nightmares despite the coolness of the night air.  The kings

bedroom was most regally appointed, with every luxury one could

imagine and so many gifts of silk and lace and incense that

Dudley could scarcely walk in the room without tripping over

something.

  Dudley did not look towards that open door, though.  Nor did he

pay any attention to the mutterings and occasional screams of his

king.  Long habit had made ignoring the tortured cries a thing of

ease for him; Dudley had the work of running the kingdom to do

and spared little time for things like compassion.

  "God!  You'll never..." came the continued sounds from within

the bedchamber of the young king, Edward VI.

 

  Outside, in the hall, some of the ladies were talking.  "Dee's

been to see him."  "Oh? What did he say?"  "Not good..." and some

muffled whispers as a messenger came to the door, knocked and was

allowed entry to the king's room.  Then, when the door closed,

the conversation inevitably continued, "Not good?  Well, that's

that, then.  Dee knows how many beans make five."

  They spoke of Dr. John Dee, well known astrologer to many

courts and many crowned heads.  He had come and pronounced that

the auspices for the young king were not only unpromising but

positively gloomy.  Dudley had brought the man in personally, and

seemed unsurprised by what he had to say; Dudley didn't seem

altogether displeased at having the surmises about the king's

failing health confirmed.

  The messenger was shown out the door; those waiting outside had

no way of knowing if he had even spoken with the young king.  No

doubt John Dudley (the de facto ruler of the land) would handle

the situation if it proved of any import.  Most of the court

seemed resigned-- from the loftiest noble to the lowest serving

girl-- that this king would not last long and that true power

didn't vest in the young frail man in any case, so his death

(should it come soon) would not disrupt things overly.

  The muffled conversations about the demons which afflicted or

possessed the young king stopped abruptly as Northumberland

himself poked his head out the door and called for a scribe and

one of the King's Messengers to be sent into the chamber at once.

 Immediately his orders were obeyed and there was a flurry of

motion in the halls for a while as people were awakened and

brought to the correct rooms.

  About an hour after they arrived, the scribe and messenger left

without any word to those who still awaited without.  There was

always a large crowd outside the king's rooms at any time of day

or night.  The number of people varied, but often the halls were

nearly packed with the various functionaries attending to their

duties or lingering near their lord in anticipation of further

instructions.

  Inside Edward's rooms there was also an air of anticipation,

but not of the same innocent nature.  It was the anticipation of

a greedy and self-righteous man who was waiting for some final

barrier to be lifted so he could attain his true goal.

  In this case the barrier was Edward's continued existence and

the Duke of Northumberland was hardly the only man laying plots

and making plans; his followers and admirers also nursed lofty

aspirations and certainly had no more loyalty to Northumberland

than he had for them.  Dudley was useful to certain men, and they

were useful to him.  While that remained the case no one need

launch a war to grab hold of the reins of England; compromises

could be found to appease even the most ambitious of men.

  Much of Dudley's design came down to his son Guilford, and to

the Lady Jane Grey.  Lady Jane was the great-niece of the late

King Henry VIII (the granddaughter of his favourite sister Mary,

to whose line he had willed the crown and country when the lines

of his daughters Mary and Elizabeth ended) and Dudley had plans

to marry the girl off to his son and put her on the throne as his

next puppet, should Edward die without issue... which now seemed

more than likely.

  John Dudley had no intention of ever letting the Henry's

daughter Mary be crowned-- she would surely abolish the

Protestant religion and return to the old Catholic ways.  Dudley

feared the damage this could do to the new trade alliances which

had opened up when England had separated themselves from Rome and

the machinations of the Pope.  And the thought of renewed purges

for heresy and public burnings also disturbed him-- the common

folk of the country might rise up for once and all over yet

another change in religion so quickly.

  John Dudley's faith was only in money and in power, so he paid

little mind to which god or gods the common people prayed.  So

long as he could take a cut from every church collection plate,

the prayers could be directed at Stan himself for all Dudley

cared.  All that mattered was that Dudley win in the end.  He had

every intention of doing just that.

  The king cried out, "No, you won't!" and in a softer voiced

countered, "we shall see."

  Dudley shivered, then dismissed the feeling.  How odd that once

in a while Edward's rantings seemed to provide him answers to his

own private questions.  Dudley recalled one night when it almost

seemed the young king's delirium had been tailored to his inner

thoughts.  But surely that was all coincidence; let a man or boy

rant long enough and eventually they will say something that

appears profound.

  A knock at the door drew Dudley's attention away from the

occupant of the bed, and he called out for the door to be opened,

not hearing the king call out weakly through the open door of the

next room, "I will fight you."

  A tall, angular man with a high forehead and thin lips came to

the door of the king's apartments and was allowed in to see John

Dudley with no announcement.  This was also normal for the time

of night; Darren Kendall often came calling on his lord in the

late evening-- especially now that Dudley had nearly moved into

the royal apartments to be near the king at all times.

  "It's very bad tonight," Dudley told his friend Kendall.

  "I can see that," the man agreed.

  "I often wonder who he is talking to... sometimes I could swear

he has two voices and he is engaged in some weighty debate that

none of us could ever hope to fathom."

  "So long as it keeps him busy," Kendall smiled meanly.

  Dudley looked at him oddly.  Darren Kendall may have been one

of his oldest and closest friends, but the man had a mean streak

that defied logic or accounting.

  "He was never made for this world," Dudley said with a semi-

gracious nod at the supine and moaning king.  "And perhaps the

battle he fights is for all of us."

  "Everyone needs a hobby..." Kendall smiled again.  "If he

wasn't made for this world then it should give him comfort he

isn't going to be here for much longer."  Seeing a disapproving

look from his friend he quickly changed the subject. "So, what

did you decide to tell the King of Spain?"

  "That he shouldn't be the Pope's puppet."

  Kendall thought a moment.  "I doubt that will please His

Majesty overly."

  Understatement.  Dudley laughed slightly, "You have a talent

for words, my friend.  I expect him to send back an apoplectic

reply within the month when I will..."

  Whatever else he might have said was cut off by a new bout of

moans from the bed as the young king sweated and spun in tortured

sleep.  "You can't!  I won't!" came the barely understandable

delirious shouts.  And every once in a while a lower, deeper

sounding voice which proclaimed, "I will!"

  No wonder people had been overheard talking about witchcraft

and possession.  If Dudley hadn't been assured by doctors he

trusted and respected that such shouting and mental disturbances

were normal in the very ill, he might have given way to such

outlandish and superstitious beliefs himself.

  As if in response to Dudley's thoughts the king suddenly

shouted, "It is evil!!!" and threw himself upright in his bed. 

Edward had not been conscious in days and hadn't sat up on his

own in nearly a month so both men rushed to his bed as quickly as

they could.

  "God's blood!" Dudley swore, tripping over a large censer of

very fragrant oils and spilling it.  When he reached the king he

asked, "What is it Edward?"

  Edward sat up, apparently awake and aware.  But no light

gleamed in his eyes and his mouth wore a cruel smile.  Cold, dead

eyes looked at the two men.  The king smiled evilly at Kendall

and said, "A man after my own heart".

  Then Edward's lungs heaved a huge cough and a gout of blood

came from between his lips like vomit.  It spilled down his

sheets and blankets.  He turned to Dudley and rasped in a voice

thick with blood and mucous, "It was hard going... for a while I

thought the little bastard would beat me."

  Edward's body gave another shudder and he smiled again as more

blood poured out of his mouth.  A brief glint of light flashed in

the boy's eyes, reflected perhaps from one of the glittering

objects which surrounded him.  In a very childish, innocent voice

he softly said, "I did beat you..."

  Edward died.

  For nearly five minutes Dudley and Kendall just stood there

staring at each other, occasionally looking back to the body of

the king as it sat before them totally lifeless.  Finally,

Kendall stepped closer to the body and with deliberation pressed

the king back against his pillows and closed the boy's eyes. 

Dead bodies shouldn't sit upright and glare in triumph like that;

it tended to disturb people.

  Kendall and Dudley were certainly disturbed.  Neither man could

be certain what they had just witnessed.  Dudley praised God that

his friend didn't make some callous jest at this point; for once,

Kendall knew to keep his mouth shut.

  Dudley used the silence to think.  This must be handled with

the utmost care.  I must get my son and Lady Jane somewhere safe

now, and married now.  Can we even announce the king has died? 

No.  Better to say he is resting comfortably until the succession

can be secured.

  Dudley told his friend, "Get a message to my son.  I need to

see him now.  Immediately."  He had no need to tell Kendall to

remain silent about what they had both just seen; Kendall never

gave a thing away to anyone without being told.

  Darren Kendall turned to go.

  Dudley added, "And have someone get hold of Abbot Carlisle at

my estate and tell him we are going to need the chapel for a

wedding."

  Kendall smiled.  He left without another word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Interlude: A Palimpsest of the writings of Princess Elizabeth

    with off-subject and religious materials deleted and various

    historical facts included for increased clarity.

                      The tale of the small man

 

  ...they came every day.  I never saw them; I couldn't recall

the first time I noticed I could hear them or when I decided they

existed.  At one point I thought them only far-off echoes or

animal sounds in the night, but then I learned to hear them more

closely.

  When the French Envoy latched onto me as if I already wore the

crown (and my sister Mary already in her grave) and his chief

rival at Court began plotting my death the little voices of the

unseen things came to tell me.  They whispered the threats and

poison the Spanish Ambassador had put in my sister's ear and I

could almost hear his inflection as they relayed his many

resentments.  For the sake of his hatred of both myself and the

French he laboured to poison Mary's mind against me with tales of

my heresies, my revels, and my scorn of her catholic religion--

and the tinkling little voices revealed all to me.

  They brought me snatches of words spoken by my friend William

Cecil, and I could also hear the grief in his repeated words as

he pled my case to any at Court who would listen; he would not

allow any in his presence to repeat the rumours about me plotting

to rise against my sister Mary's lawful reign.

  I heard Robin's words from far off, and words spoken about me

abroad in the land by the common people.  I didn't know how or

why the these things were made known to me, but it brought me

great comfort to learn that I was well bethought by so many in

the country-- even after so many conspiracies had been hatched in

my name.

  At times the unseen voices were my only real company.

  Always they were there, unseen but never far off.  They focused

on me, drawn perhaps like moths to the inner flame which passed

to me from my mother.  They shouted for my attention, cavorted to

be noticed.  But I remained blind.  Dumb.  I could not see them,

find them, find voice to talk with them.

  The best I could manage was to convey to them a sense of

appreciation.  I sang out to them with my mind and sent them such

comfort as I regularly gave to the birds and other night

creatures.  I still was not exactly sure these unseen creatures

existed; I thought at times that the whispers and voices I could

hear might only be another part of the "legacy" of gifts my

mother had passed to me.

  I put the information I gleaned to good use whenever possible.

 Again, I know at one time I thought them merely muffled noises

or perhaps voices which came from my own intuition.  But I did

eventually realise the truth of their existence.

  God's Blood, but I am vain and arrogant and vain!  To believe

that little voices of my own mind would always be accurate and

tell me just what I needed to know.  What a creature I am!

  Robin, my eyes... are you laughing at me?  I  wager you are.

 

 

  ... couldn't have been more bored and scared at the same time.

 Isn't that a fierce and disturbing combination?

  But when he arrived and I finally saw, I knew exactly what he

was.  I could see him, his birth, his being as it developed and

how he made his way to me.  I saw it all, as perhaps no other

mortal person could.

  Will no one ever understand it?  Robin, if you ever read this

perhaps you alone will understand.  Nothing satanic involved

here; nothing unnatural.  Just flattery, and a desire to exist.

  If those are crimes they are ones of which we are all guilty.

  Let me make it plain.  I heard the tinkling voices, the small

whispers most of my life.  Even before the legacy of my mother

passed to me on that awful night when I saw the queen dragged to

her death I had those sounds, those small half-heard voices with

me.  I thought them a part of me.  To search for them in the

beyond did not at first occur to me.

  But gradually, as I explored my gifts and learned to use my

power I became more aware of these whispers, these tinkling

presences.  With concentration I learned to hear the colours of

difference in them, to discern the variations in theme and

feeling and possibly even personality.

  But they lacked cohesion; they were simple animus and purpose

with no ability to truly intrude on the living world.  A presence

and an absence all at the same time.  They seemed most focused

when paid attention, or when I tried to respond to their sounds

with sounds of my own.

  Despite my complete and continued failures to establish two-way

communication with the presences, I always felt their collective

will and awareness draw together more tightly in response to my

efforts.  The more I tried to get a feel or mental image of them,

the more they seemed to take on substantiality-- at least in my

mind.  I began to name them based on their feel... the one which

tinkled like a half-empty cup on a silver tray; the one which

whistled like a teapot; the one like a swarm of bees.

  They became distinct if unseen individuals over time.  What the

creatures looked like in their mind's eye (or even if they had

such a thing as a mind's eye) I cannot say.  But I began to know

them all.

  It was almost as if they didn't know themselves that they

existed until I paid them notice.  The very act of my studying

them altered them irreparably.  Perhaps something else caused it

but I doubt that.  I cannot say for sure.  All I know is that one

day I knew they had changed. They seemed to become aware of me as

a living being for the first time.

  Understand, I had always been aware of them. Even when I

believed them my own inner voices I knew them.  But never, never

had I perceived that they had any sense of me or indeed of

anything at all-- even their own life and the sound of their

tinkling and chiming.

  But, as I say, that changed one day.

  I had a very interesting visit with my sister; she seemed very

animated and happy, yet disconsolate all at the same time.  As if

she both welcome a chance to tell me some fabulous secret, and at

the same time dreaded telling me it or some aftermath to follow

closely on.

  But all during my conversation with Mary, the tinkling voice I

had learned to hear in shades of purple like a swirl of rustling

leaves kept insistently whistling in my ear unheard by anyone

else.

  She means to put you in a dungeon.

  I don't believe the presence or entity actually knew the

meaning of those words, only that my sister had thoughts of me

and that I should know them in full.

  I had tried to send thoughts of understanding to the presence,

to let it know I had received its message and it could stop

whistling in my ear.  But again to no avail.

  Another one of the presences also demanded attention.  It had

been quietly in my mind since Mary left the room.  The message

had less urgency and the presence seemed less powerful than some,

but I recognised it-- the one that sounded like a small spinning

blade of grass. 

  You must see the prince when he comes.

  Other voices relayed this thought as well.  I listened

carefully and tuned out the louder to hear the smallest among

them.  The one that sounded like a child's ball bouncing on stone

was there; the one that felt like a small mouse somehow; the

hissing one that smelled of fresh rain and horses.  I counted

hundreds of them.  All demanding to be heard.

  As I paid attention to each in its turn, they became somehow

aware of it and responded with more animation.  Perhaps it was

simply that I noticed them and bothered to try and converse with

them that held their interest.  I also felt sure they could sense

that core of power, the wick which burns within me and drives me

onward.

  For whatever reason they lingered.  They gathered in greater

numbers daily.  They flashed and whistled and sang in my mind and

begged for my attention, my notice and regard.

  This went on for months.  I told no one, not even Robin.  What

would I have said?  That I commune with the elementals of the

forest?  That sprites and hobgoblins and unseen twittering

creatures chatter in delight when I glance their way?  That they

brought to me snatches of thoughts and conversations which they

do not themselves understand?

  There came a day, I recall it clearly, when it all became too

much.  Too many of them had gathered.  They chimed like a chorus

all through the night and then on into the day as well.  None

other could hear them; they sang for me alone.  Such adulation in

the music of their combined sounds-- an endless cycle of loss and

redemption in tones of silence so eloquent it defied words and

simply begged for understanding.

  I could not listen to it a moment longer.  I felt I would

shatter like a fallen hand-glass.

  "God's Wounds!!!" I shouted into the still night air.  "I have

felt you!  I acknowledge you!  What more would you have of me???

 You will drive me mad with this song.  I cannot stand it any

longer.  Do you hear me???  I cannot stand it!"

  At once silence fell like a corpse, with a heavy dull thud.  In

the fields, in the woods beyond, in every room and even in my

mind.  Everywhere a pervasive and unnatural silence.  Did they

understand me?  Oh they had, they had at last been able to

understand me.

  My regard had become so integral to their being, my notice so

important that they now conformed utterly to my wishes.  They

knew my desires, had somehow bridged that gap I had been unable

to cross and learned how to read me, even as I had laboured so

long to penetrate their mystery.

  Something still left me unsettled though.  It took a moment to

discern the source of my concern.  Then I had it.  Not only had

the tinkling beings fallen silent in response to my angry

outburst, they had somehow used their collective force or animus

to silence all things as far as I could hear.  Not a bird

chirped; no hounds barked; the horses stood stock-still in their

stalls and made no sound.  Not even a gentle soughing bat's wings

to disturb the late night air.

  I went to sleep that night annoyed.  At myself principally. 

All they desired was my notice... something I could easily spare.

 Yet I had lashed out at them and in my rage gave them their

first clear message from me.  What was that message?  What

response to their years of concern and unseen aid?

  Go away and leave me alone.  That is what I had told them.

  I did not sleep well.

  The next day and night passed in an unearthly silence.  Even

the noises within the castle seemed somehow stifled and weak. 

Sounds failed to echo as normal.  It unsettled me greatly.

  The hunting party came back late in the evening, announcing

they had failed to so much as spot, let alone bag any game.  A

whole wasted afternoon and evening left them sore and moody. 

Most of them retired to take their cups well into the evening,

and a great ruckus commenced in the main hall when those who

complained of the lack of fresh meat for the table encountered

those who had spent the entire day fruitlessly in search of same.

 Typical men.

  But the drunken brawl indicated other problems.  And tongues

started wagging already in tales of old curses and evils.  The

forest had gone silent; had God abandoned his flock?

  When I heard one of the scullions whispering that the silence

resulted from a curse left behind on the castle by my mother (the

"Witch Boleyn" she said) I quickly resolved that the situation

could not continue.  Only a matter of time before the curses

which supposedly came from my late mother would be ascribed to

me-- then my personal safety would hang in the balance.

  In the small hours of the morning I could stand the silence no

longer.  Never before had I imagined that something as ordinary

as quiet stillness could feel so viscerally ominous.  I could not

allow it to go on; I stepped out of my window and without

thinking about it floated down to the ground just outside the

main courtyard.

  I had never before done such a thing and never since have I

managed.  When I think abut trying to levitate myself I am unable

to even lift a hair off of my head.  But this one time, out of

extremity or fear or as a gift from some other force which

supported me I accomplished the impossible; I'd simply stepped

off into the night air and floated or flew in the way witches are

said to fly.

  Without stopping to consider what had just happened I went into

the very heart of the greenwood, consumed by my own purpose.  I

settled in a quiet spot away from all human eyes, lay down on the

cool ground and spread my consciousness outward to the trees; the

grasses; the very spirits of the earth itself.  I lay there open,

exposed and vulnerable; I remained unafraid while my purpose

held.

  I gathered all the emotion and healing power I could find

within myself into one small core like a wick which burned within

me barely contained.  I plunged into that focus, then through it

and out the other side and sent it out like a speech or a song.

  It could not have been words, but to render it in words, I said

to them, "I see you.  I know you.  I love you all.  You are my

children.

  "I didn't mean to hurt you, to lash out at you.  I was

frightened and weary.  You are too many and I am but one; while

you are small and I seem much larger I am still only one-- and

you are the multitude.  I cannot stand up under the weight of so

many thousands.

  "I love you.  You are the unseen children of the wood, the

voices of the winds upon the water and the smell of the strong

beams of sunshine melting the long snows of winter and gleaming

on the land.

  "I see you and I find you beautiful.  But I do not wish to be

strangled in beauty, smothered to death in honeysuckle and sweet

soughing sighs like falling leaves."

  It came out all at once, more thought and energy than sound or

act, but it hung there in the air reverberating silently like a

thick cloud of doom.  I began to wonder what I had unleashed. 

  But then came a softening, and something nearly imperceptible

began to happen.  The silence began slowly to give way.  I heard

what sounded like mutterings of the waters and murmurings in the

greenwood.  I saw a bird land nearby and it twittered softly.  I

thought I heard tinkling bells in the distance.  Some sort of

discussion was going on.  That is what I believe.

  Fearing to overbalance the deliberations I said the last of

what I had to say.  I told them "The constant singing cannot be

endured; I am not worthy.  But the silence must also cease now. 

We must find another way, a better way than this."

  I stood up and gathered the folds of my dress together and

brushed away the fallen leaves and dirt and left the forest and

the waters and the skies to their debates.  I barely had the

energy to make it back to the Keep.

  I took pains that no one should see me enter.  And yes, I took

the stairs.  I could barely recall the impetus that drove me to

just step out of my window and descend to the ground earlier and

I had no idea at all of how to repeat the feat which had taken me

so easily from my high window to the grassy earth with such ease.

 Certainly I'd no idea how to reverse such an accident and ascend

back up to my room.  It seemed arrogant to even try.

  As I fell asleep exhausted I am sure I heard a few birds

hesitantly chirrup and cheep outside in the forest.  A dog

howled... I heard it distinctly though it was still a very soft

sound.  In that last moment of consciousness I relaxed and I

understood that my intent and my meaning had been understood.

  It was two days later that I first saw the little man.

  I stood on the balcony of the east tower and looked down from

the parapet into the heart of the greensward-- glad of the

natural semi-silence of the night.  I breathed in the sweet

perfumes of the gardens below and the remnants of the evening

meal still wafting up from the kitchens as the servants ate their

fill.  Life had seemingly returned to normal for everyone else;

the whisperings about demons and black magic forgotten by all but

the more superstitious.  So what was it I saw out of the corner

of my eye if the demons had departed?

  The movement is what drew my eye at first.  A jerky sort of

movement like a bad puppeteer forcing a crudely made doll to move

against its bindings.  I almost missed him entirely against the

dark brush.  But there he was.  The Small Man.

  I say man because something undeniably male came across even in

its jerkiest movements.  Others might not see it so.  Who can say

for sure?

  He seemed nothing more than a loosely bound bundle of sticks

and leaves... like a forgotten child's toy made of whatever could

be found on the forest floor.  I might have begun to think my

mind deceived me but then he moved again.  I saw him move of his

own volition.

  I nearly tried to fly down and pick him up or go look at him

more closely.  But the thought of trying somehow frightened me.

  I worried about what might happen if anyone else saw the Small

Man.  What would happen if I went down to see him more closely

myself and someone caught me?  Already there were rumours I

consorted with evil forces.  I could hear a disturbance going on

elsewhere in the Keep; agitated voices interrupted the natural

noises of the night and my sister's high peals could be heard

over them all at times.

  I decided to go back to my room and not pay any further

attention to the Small Man.  Perhaps it would simply go away.  In

any case I could not take any more risks so soon after my last

little adventure in the woods-- there were those in Mary's Court

who would accuse me of any crime for the sake of the hatred they

had bourn for my mother.

  At all times I had to remain above any such suspicions-- or my

head was at risk of falling from my neck.  So I turned from the

parapet and went to my chambers and tried to sleep.

  I had seen this thing before in my mind.  Perhaps not the very

thing, but something much like it.  Many of the paths I had begun

tracking as a child led to the Small Man eventually becoming a

part of my life and my future.  It happened many different ways

on different paths and there were many varied shapes to it, but

it was still something I had not anticipated as being likely for

years, though I hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

 

 

  ... envoy of Phillip of Spain had sent letters that he would

arrive within a week to work out the details for my sister Mary's

marriage to his prince.  The very walls of the castle rang with

the feverish preparations ordered by my impatient sister.

  Phillip was not yet King in Spain, though he would be one day,

and a marriage had been arranged through envoys and ambassadors

who flattered my sister outrageously.  I knew them for what they

were... sycophants and worms out for advantage.  But I knew

Phillip too for what he was... a man.  I had seen him in my

mind's eye already-- speaking with his ministers; laying his

plans; bedding down with his whores.

  Mary knew nothing of the man save that his envoys had sworn his

undying love for her and her alone in all the world.  It seemed

Prince Phillip was the only decent man whom Mary could even

contemplate marrying... or at least it seemed that way to Mary

I've no doubt, by the time Phillip's ambassadors and supporters

got through working on her frail and fickle personality.

  She was not well in other ways, my sister.  She had a fever for

days before Phillip arrived.  She spent impatient hours wandering

the corridors-- sometimes in near hysteria or dementia-- calling

out details to court followers and serving maids and obsessing

over each ill-hung tapestry or wilted flower.  Everything had to

be perfect for when Phillip arrived; Mary nearly killed herself

with this pointless arranging and rearranging of pointless

detail.

  Mary spent her reserves of strength freely and unwisely; she

spread herself so thinly through the Court that her physicians

finally had to be called in to demand she take to her bed. This

she did, but only reluctantly and after assuring herself that all

preparations for Phillip's arrival were in hand.

  One of those preparation for this momentous event was that I

found myself banished from Court.

  By this time the Spanish envoy had thoroughly poisoned the mind

of my sister against me.  He knew I remained close with the

French ambassador (his constant rival) and in the interminable

press for position the Spanish envoy made it his work to invent

wild tales against me.  He spoke of my mockery of the catholic

mass-- which I had only begun to take out of courtesy to my

sister and in defiance of my own beliefs, a sacrifice I had made

for Mary's sake.

  He also used the great love the people had for me to threaten

my sister.  He spoke of forces plotting on my behalf, of those

who would rise against their lawful Queen and replace her with

her younger, prettier and more malleable sister.  The snatches of

whispers brought to me on the winds told me of his plots, but I

could not see any way to undo the damage he laboured to do. 

  Mary had a long memory.  She would never forget that

Northumberland had tried to set Jane Grey on the throne the very

night our brother Edward had died.  She had not forgotten the

long rides through the towns and villages, the desperate flights

from attacking mobs and the search for those who would help her

put down the vile traitor and secure her own throne over

Northumberland's carefully laid plans.

  Somehow she recalled all that, yet forgot that I had been with

her on all those long rides, proclaiming her sovereign and taking

the bruises and insults she had bourne with as much grace as I

could.  Sorting out the rebellion had taken us nearly two years,

and the consolidation of her power continued daily and arduously.

 And since political considerations had forced Mary to pardon

Northumberland and Lady Jane, the risk of rebellion circled above

Mary's throne like a circling vulture.

  The Spanish envoy used Mary's fears and insecurity to twist her

thoughts ever against me; he even used my friendship with Robert

Dudley to inspire terror in the Queen. In her mind I became the

enemy.  Elizabeth the traitor; the viper at her bosom; the

bastard of the Great Whore.  Another Northumberland out to steal

her rightful throne and kingdom-- close friend to the son of

Northumberland and rumoured to be his lover.

  All my attempts to mollify her doubts and fears fell on deaf

ears; the Queen had made up her mind.  I was banished from Court.

 Phillip would not feel safe coming to see her if I remained

anywhere nearby to work my evil magicks.  Mary sent me to the

north country, to stay with cousins.  The whispers in the night

still told me I was to be locked up, dungeoned away, but I could

not see that in my mind's eye on the current path so I went

willingly from Court and did not give Mary any reason to doubt my

obedience to her every command.

  Perhaps it was meant as punishment, but it was the happiest few

weeks of my life.  I loved my cousins and my uncle and the

household staff fussed over me like a new toy.  I settled in

quickly and quietly.  No one in the surrounding town was told the

Princess Elizabeth (as many still called me in defiance of

edicts) had taken up residence locally.

  I did not dare risk being seen by any in the town either, so I

remained very much inside the house or in the orchards maintained

by my family just to the west of the main residence.  I knew what

would happen if people in the area began to suspect my presence--

the gifts, the offerings, the lines of well-wishers.    Such

things would eventually be known to the Queen and magnified many

times over.  Any displays of the people's love for me would serve

only to further feed the consuming hunger of Mary's anger and

suspicion.

  So I pretended I had become a new person for a while, someone

of no consequence or secret abilities.  Just a little girl

playing in the flowers and studying in dim candlelight and

helping to clear away the table at night like any child.

  I resolved to be the perfect nondescript child.  I read the

Bible.  The very Bible Mary had caused to be circulated

throughout the land after she re-established the old religion and

had the prayerbooks of Henry's time condemned and burned.  I took

up embroidery; my younger cousin was an expert despite her small

hands and she had soon instructed me in the delicate art.  I

stayed out of sight, away from any discussions of politics or

matters of state.  I was isolated, quiet, reserved, but happy.

  Shortly after I'd arrived I came to suspect or realise that I

was being watched.  I heard nothing, smelled nothing, saw

nothing.  Nevertheless I could just tell.  Something had focused

on me with an intensity I had never experienced.  It hovered

close to me, leaving behind a sense of vague disquiet and an

oddly indefinable smell-- like burned saffron.  It reminded me (I

could not say why) of a singular moment I'd had as a child.

  There had been a day, I don't know my age at the time but it

happened long ago, when Henry had brought me to his chambers in

private.  The candles and braziers had all been muted save for

one near the great bed in which the King had slept.  In a chair I

could see something, like a shadow or bolt of cloth.  Henry

brought me into his chambers slowly, nearly dragging me the last

few steps as I became more and more wary and nervous.

  I don't recall what I had thought at the time, what upset me

so.  I only remember feeling afraid beyond any fear I can recall

since.  Henry brought me nearly to the bed and stopped before the

chair.  I could see now that there sat someone in that chair, not

a bolt of dark cloth at all but a man.

  Impossibly old, he came to me very quickly and I could hardly

keep my feet under his gaze.  He lifted me up and looked into my

eyes probing, searching.  He scrutinised me.  I nearly swooned. 

Then he smiled; I felt sick inside.  Something intense and

demanding in that smile, something unanswerable and subtly

malevolent as I recall it now.

  Then he set me down and told Henry I could go.  I was sent back

to my room.  I had dreams that night of that evil smile and the

impossibly old man who had lifted me up as if he would dash me

against the stone floor.

 I have seen that smile since, in my dreams and in my mind's eye.

  Why did I suddenly feel as if that old man still had me in his

arms and stared into my soul?  I did not know.  But I didn't

imagine it.  The feeling exerted a cloying lethargy over me I had

to struggle to shake off.  Never had I felt the presence of that

strange old man as clearly as I did in the kitchen of my cousin's

house that night.

  I shook my head and the lethargy passed.  I went to the basin

and washed my face, my hands.  I went to the window to breathe

the night air and compose myself.

  Then I saw him.  The Small Man.  The bundle of sticks.  Just

barely out there, nearly out of sight and barely visible in the

darkness.  And yet something commanded I look at him, acknowledge

him.  I knew this could not be a pile of sticks any longer, nor a

child's toy.  It had will. It had purpose.  It had followed me

somehow, across the many long miles as I had travelled north from

Court.

  It could not be another such being, I felt certain,.  If a race

of stickmen had been living in the land they surely should have

been seen and commented upon by mortal men and women long before

I noticed their existence.  No, it had to be the same creature. 

The Small man, made of sticks and cloth and daubed mud and paper.

  He came towards the window.  That is to say he seemed to come

closer to me, though I could not tell if he walked, crawled or

the very wind buoyed him up and blew him gently closer.  But a

sound suddenly came from the courtyard.  Startled, he drew back

into the darkness suddenly.

  Horses.  Loud men thundering into the courtyard and trampling

the lovely flowers that lined the path to the house.  They

shouted for my uncle to come out and greet them and for the

grooms to tend their horses.  Abruptly it popped into my mind:

these men are here for you.

  The captivity I had heard whispered of by the elementals now

came to pass.  I was taken to the tower, a fearsome place of

spirits and long-dead horrors which still remain behind, haunting

the corridors like illustrations in a macabre gallery.  Even the

walls seemed stained at times with the tears and blood of the

tormented souls who had been housed their and sent to their

deaths.

  I wonder if the common folk of the land would have felt the

same dread I did with my sensitivities to such unseen forces.  To

say that tortured phantoms of those who died betrayed walk at

night through the Tower does not take the mind and sight of a

witch... even the commonest folk of the land know the stories and

legends, and feel the inescapable dread which exudes from the

place.

  I was arrested on a pretext; my mind's eye had not shown me

this thing fully yet but I came to learn that a new rebellion had

been fomented in my name.  When it came to Mary's attention the

conspirators had been rounded up and put to the torture.

  One of the lead conspirators, Sir Thomas Wyatt, named me.  He

confessed under the lash that I had been privy to all their

plans, that I had given them my approval to remove Mary and place

me on the throne in her stead.  This rebellion arose largely as a

response to Mary having forced catholicism on the people-- many

of whom had other views and leanings towards the teachings of

Martin Luther.  Also there were those who opposed my sister

Mary's upcoming marriage to Phillip of Spain and any alliance

with the papist powers.

  It was said that I endorsed and supported this unrest; some

whispered that I had planted these seeds of revolution

personally.  Malicious lies-- I had never even spoken with the

bedraggled young man they brought into my cell to accuse me after

my arrest.  I had to look closely to discover the man's identity:

Sir Thomas Wyatt. I knew of him but had never met him until the

night he was brought to make charges against me.

  I was shown a letter he had written which promised his fealty

to myself as liege and lord.  But it was a letter I had never

seen and certainly they had no reply to this missive from me

indicating any support for a revolt against Mary's lawful

majesty.

 It didn't seem to matter to my jailers or my sister.  I was

informed that I would remain in the Tower until such time as I

confessed my vile practices against the queen.  Sir Thomas

Wyatt's fate had been sealed already for his treason; he would go

to the block in a matter of days.  I had the feeling he had

implicated me in hopes of lessening his own punishment for it was

well known at Court that my sister Mary believed the stories

about me and secretly delighted in having confirmation given to

her most bizarre imaginings about my "practices" as she named

them.

  Regardless of the reasons, the lies told by Thomas Wyatt

sufficed to keep me dungeoned up until such time as my sister

chose to relent.  Lady Jane and her father had been executed even

before my arrest, so I drew what comfort I could from the notion

that bad as my lot seemed, it could easily have been made worse

for me.

  So I stayed in the Tower.  Imprisoned.  Locked away from

everything I had known.  Perhaps to a shepherdess on the moors or

a smithy by his forge the prospect of being stuck in one small

room would be appealing.  But I had known the world.

  Still, in my cell I had, light, food, warmth, my loyal Cat

Ashleigh to see to my needs. The chief warder even took time out

each day to inquire about my health and see to my wants; Master

Kingston seemed very sympathetic to my plight and hadn't the wit

to hide that even when it might be overseen by my enemies.  How

could I complain when to most people in the land I lived in the

lap of luxury?

  What an ungrateful wretch I can be at times...

  I lived in a room.  My body lived in a room I should say; my

mind wandered far and wide.  I sent my awareness abroad.  I

learned many things despite the deliberate efforts to keep me in

ignorance.

  I began to understand the real reasons for my imprisonment

gradually.  A complex web of events had been abroad in the land

since I had left court.  I had been living in the north country

on family estates since the death of the Lord High Admiral,

Thomas Seymour-- another man who took my name and used it for

plots of his own.  In my absence, ambitious men had seized on

"Elizabeth" as their cause.  Perhaps Mary's own stubbornness and

fear contributed to the belief that I would be a better monarch.

  Some force drove a rebellion in my name, though I had no name

for that entity and could only see the traces of it in events and

behaviours I followed with my mind while my body languished in

jail.  I could see the footprints or the wake of its passage as

it drove inexorably onward furthering the cause of "Elizabeth".

  I could also see that none of the people involved in the

smaller events could perceive the larger tapestry.  They acted in

innocence, blissfully unaware of some influence or driving force

behind it all.  Even Sir Thomas Wyatt seemed convinced of the

rightness of his cause... what could engender such passion in

people who never met me that they would rise against their

monarch and face a traitor's death?  How could so many fine men

be manipulated without their knowledge or consent into performing

such actions?

  I praised God for the gifts of awareness I had which let me

detect the undercurrent linking all these different threads

together.  I had identified... something.  I did not know how to

name it but i would not forget it.  And once I became aware of

the something, I became able to perceive its wake, its footprints

as it passed throughout the country.

  I could detect the influence of the something in the oppressive

plottings of the Spanish Envoy against me.  A concerted effort

had been made to convince my sister Mary of many foulnesses I

supposedly had taken my part in-- yet always these fears and

beliefs served to damage my sister's cause and elevate mine.

  The something played a very clever game.

  Not only plots of revolt but murder rang with my name on them.

 Disgraceful.  Mary had been convinced slowly that her prince

could never set foot on English soil while I lived free; she had

been told outright that Phillip of Spain would be killed in my

name to prevent the marriage.  That the common people might rise

up and depose her in my favour.

  I doubt this held any truth.  I could feel no plots of that

magnitude abroad in any mind in the land no matter how far and

keenly I attuned my thoughts.

  But these were things Mary wished to believe and I had never

been able to sway my sister once she had formed her own opinion.

Years ago I had made a sincere attempt to embrace her religion

and learn her ways, though privately I still continued to hold to

the Protestantism I had grown up knowing.  But no matter how

honest my attempts to please my sister she never quite believed

in me.

  In my cell I sent my mind far and wide and gleaned so much that

surprised me.  For one thing, Mary lived in envy of me.  Imagine

that?  Mary had grown jealous of the bastard daughter of a whore,

a witch locked away in a cell.

  Secretly she might not have believed that Phillip would die if

I remained free, but it served her vanity to insure that the

handsome prince not be allowed to ever set eyes upon me.  Mary's

beauty and vitality had largely faded during the years it took to

assure her throne and the struggle to impose her religion and

will on the country had also left her spent and hollowed.

  No, Phillip must not be allowed to see a young princess in the

full blush of her beauty, my sister determined.  In politics

nothing was certain until the act had been consummated; and what

is done can be as easily undone by clever men.  So Mary told

herself it was my treasons, and not her vanity which prompted her

to act.

  I felt the something clearly in her mood swings and her hatred

of me.  I could not being myself to hate her for having been so

manipulated.

 

  ...and it scared me.  It reminded me of something else the

voices had once said.  This had been years ago, just after

Henry's death.

  Mary and I had been relegated to the status of bastards again

and Edward had the crown.  Thomas Seymour had married Henry's

last queen, Katherine Parr in a desperate attempt to consolidate

his power and assure himself of the regency over my brother

Edward.  With Seymour's brother as High Protector, and Thomas as

Lord High Admiral the two men had parcelled out the kingdom in

their minds... though not in the same lots as they were

quarrelsome men and had very different views on how to divide the

spoils and run the country.

  I had been put into the guardianship of Thomas Seymour and I

lived with his wife and family on their estate.  Seymour was a

fine man, a handsome man, and though often flirtatious and

perhaps inexcusably so with one of my years, he certainly proved

less cruel than many of the lords and ladies I had met at Henry's

Court.  I lived with the Seymours for years, until I had become

fully a young woman in body as well as in mind.

  There was a day, an afternoon.  I recall it clearly.  I had

been summoned to the presence of my brother Edward.  Thomas

Seymour brought me to him and I was formally greeted at Court. 

This had not happened before, and certainly not with such

spectacle and so many in attendance.  I will never forget it.

  My brother the king sat in what I'd always thought of as

Henry's throne.  The throne looked empty by comparison, even with

Edward in it.  He seemed pale and looked too weak to stand and

embrace me.  Nevertheless he smiled with pure delight when he saw

me and made an effort to rise from his chair and hold me.

  I had written to him over the years regularly, and found that

he had learned to read for himself now.  He loved the tight and

formal scripting I took such pains over in my letters.  He loved

the things I wrote to him and saved all my letters.

  He wanted me at Court!  He announced I was to take up residence

in the palace and be close to him at Court, that I would be his

friend his teacher, his confident.  That I should tell him all

the things I had learned being abroad in his country and teach

him how to write such beautiful letters.

  I heard the whispers then too, though at the time I had no

understanding of what they might be.  I recall a shadow seeming

to pass over the face of my brother and a strange look settled on

his features.  Just as quickly the smile returned, but in my mind

I heard soft chimes or tinkles of odd voices.

  He is here.

  I looked around to see who spoke; the King looked at me oddly.

 Edward continued outlining plans he had made, where I was to be

housed, how many servants would be assigned to my keeping and how

we would read together from the delicately engraved bible he had

received on his last birthday as a gift from his nobles.  But I

was not listening.  I still strained to hear other voices which

continued speaking in odd tones Edward and the others could not

hear.

  He is here.  He comes.  He comes and comes again.  This he does

for you and for himself.  You come so he may come again.

  I could not make sense of it.  Too many voices all at once and

were they even voices?  Wasn't it just plates being chipped in

the kitchens below and horses shifting against their harnesses? 

In any case the combination of noises made most of Edward's

speech unintelligible.  But when he finished I thanked him

profoundly for reaching out to me in my near-exile and bringing

me home to him.

  I could see how lonely he was, and how sick too.  I also knew

somehow that he would not live long, and that he knew it as well.

 Edward accepted his fate and the pain in which he lived had

somehow served to refine his spirit.  He had a great desire to

serve God and be one with him.

  It was shortly after this that Thomas Seymour, my guardian,

came in the night to marry Edward off and seize power outright. 

His brother the Lord High Protector finally put away his anger

and came together with his sibling in a plot to steal away the

King and usurp the throne.

  A warning from one of the Howard cousins who opposed the plot

had been sent to Edward in secret, and armed men awaited with the

Castellan when the Seymours came to spirit the young boy away.  I

awoke the next morning to find my house in disarray, my beloved

servants Cat Ashleigh and Tom Parry gone, and a representative

from the King's Counsel had arrived demanding I make account for

my treasons against the King's Majesty.

  I was taken to the tower for the first time that day, and not

allowed to contact anyone.  William Cecil, who had lately become

one of my most ardent admirers and was a man of great sense and

ability, came to see me and warn me not to sign anything given to

me by any man no matter what they said.  The strange tinkling

chimes of voices also said the same thing to me over and over.  I

was not to sign anything.

  The council forced my foolish servant Tom Parry to sign a

confession they had dictated for him.  They spoke of the many

visits my guardian had made to my estates and his intention of

marrying me and poor Tom allowed himself to be bullied into

believing I had willingly been a part of the Lord High Admiral's

twisted designs.

  I was offered a similar confession but I refused.  I denounced

my servants as gossiping fools and begged of the Counsel

permission to write to King Edward personally and make account of

myself.  This could hardly be refused, though for a short time i

thought it would be.

  In the end I was allowed to send Edward a letter and I wrote to

him of my constant love and admiration for him-- using that tight

and precise lettering he so loved to read.  I wrote of my

innocence and my devotion and how cruelly ambitious men had tried

to ensnare me in their plottings without my knowledge or assent.

  Eventually I found myself delivered and back in the good graces

of my brother.  It didn't occur to me at the time that I would

one day be housed in the very same cell, awaiting the pleasure of

a very different monarch.

 

  ... and I did have other company too.  Not that my jailers knew

or would have believed.  true, I was kept away from any who

wished me well or desired to speak with me; the jailers knew

their duty and they did it.  But I did have a visitor they had no

knowledge of.

  Nearly every night from the moment I set foot back in the Tower

he was there.  I felt him at first, then saw him.  The small man.

The pile of sticks.

  I felt it somehow that very first night when I looked out the

window and spread my consciousness along the night air.  He was

there in my thoughts as I sifted the many paths I followed in my

mind... somehow he followed me here.

  He had crossed the moat?

  He had followed me even here!  Had he floated over the water or

been bourne by a bird to the shore at the base of the Tower?  I

saw him clearly a few days later, laying on the twisted yellow

grasses as if exhausted by the effort it had taken to arrive.  He

no longer moved.

  The next morning I saw him again.  I looked out the window and

found him in very much the same place.  But I could see there

were now yellow grasses reinforcing his joints and some fresh

leaves wrapping the crude junctures which formed his awkward

limbs.

  Clearly he had been busy as I slept, gathering to himself new

materials to replace that which he had lost, and he seemed

slightly larger than he'd been the first time I'd been permitted

to see him.

  The next day I looked for him after my jailers left with the

remains of my morning meal.  But I could not find the small man

anywhere on or near the shore.  I craned my head out the small

stone window in my room and scanned the shoreline and the water

and even the area by the bridge as best I could without risking a

headlong plummet from the tower.  Nothing.

  I was about to extend my inner awareness to search for him when

a flash of movement near the base of the Tower distracted me.  I

thought it a bird.

  It was not a bird.

  I could see him.  The small man.  Collected sticks and fresh

grasses and mud.  He'd pulled himself to the wall below my window

and somehow had begun climbing upwards.  I could see he'd crested

the height of a man and more.  I hadn't thought to look for him

on the walls; I thought it would stick to the shoreline so it

could flee into the brush if it feared discovery.

  Clearly I'd underestimated this creature's resolve.

  It climbed a thirdway up the stone facade as I watched in

amazement.  Then came a sick sounding crack and the network of

twigs and mud which comprised his right arm fell away and its

bindings dropped to the earth below. A moment later the rest of

the figure seemed to unwind itself down to the ground where it

collapsed in a small pile of discarded rubbish and plants.

  Macabre.  Horrid. Yet somehow pitiable.  This small construct;

this impossible being.  Why did it pursue me even to its own

destruction?  What drove the creature to make such futile

attempts?  I am Elizabeth, the Princess In The Tower.  Such icons

are intended to remain unreached.

  I started to cry.

  Impossible such a thing could exist.  Just leaves and mud and

twigs that got above themselves and got smacked down by the wrath

of God.  Why did I bother to care?

  But I had seen it.  I had watched it suffer.  I felt entirely

culpable.  It seemed the most horrible thing I'd witnessed since

that awful day when I was young and ignorant and I'd caused all

the life to fly out of one of the beautiful birds in my garden

and felt it die in my hands.

  What happened proved much worse than anything I could imagine.

  As I watched in horrified fascination, the little figure began

to reassemble itself out of anything it could find near where it

fell.  A small pebble became a new eye; a short piece of

discarded hemp slowly unravelled itself and then began to bind a

new limb into place.

  This took hours.  At times I thought it would fly apart again

from the sheer effort of it.  I could feel the discomfort of the

small man as it struggled to rebuild itself and build a new

casement to contain its animus. 

  A few more hours and the thing seemed satisfied it had been

rebuilt sufficiently.  I cheered for it the whole time, sending

it such strength as I had.  If I had thought a little more

clearly I would have prayed for it to simply give up.

  The next horrible realisation I confronted caused me to cry

again.  Nearly the moment the small man finished with his new

frame he began making his way again to the wall beneath my

window.

  I should have realised my encouragement would be taken by this

thing as a reason to continue trying to reach me no matter what

it cost him.  I heard him climbing again far below, and went to

my bed and lay down and cried some more.

  My thoughts flowed down to the creature.  I tried to make it

understand that it had to stop.  No, I told him.  Please, not

again.  Do not do this.  It is not necessary. I am not worth all

this pain.

  But still it came.  I could tell it understood me.  I could

nearly feel an awareness of itself emanating from the creature. 

Whatever part of it could hear and understand me simply

disagreed.  It had nothing but purpose and I couldn't tune out

the sound of it scratching at the wall below.

  I heard the sticks scraping to find any groove or purchase on

the cracked stone to that the rest of its body could be dragged

to a higher vantage and continue the ascent.  The sound of that

scraping was like a child crying alone in the night.  I had no

way to prevent the creature from trying and no method of

providing it any aid.

  As I tried to read my Bible for comfort, I heard it fall again.

 I felt its torment as the tiny impossible being pitted its very

existence against the implacable stone of my prison.  I could

feel it slowly starting to reassemble itself and I knew what it

would do the moment it had finished.

  I cried and cried.  I have never been weak, but I cried like a

child and was inconsolable.  Master Kingston brought me mulled

wine and sat with me, unaware of the sound from below as the

thing began to climb once again.

  The next day I could not bring myself to look out the window or

even send my awareness beyond my own cell.  I had torn some

material from my feathered pillow and wadded up some material to

stuff my ears.  If I had to listen to the thing scraping and

falling I would go mad or die with grief.  So I hid like a coward

and looked to my Bible for guidance.

  Three days it took the small man to reach me.  I do not know

how many times it fell.  I did not want to think about it.  I

woke to it cresting the stone ledge of my window and nearly

screamed.

  I leapt from the bed and went to the horrible thing and

snatched it from the sill.  Without understanding the impulse

fully I cradled it in my arms like a baby and gently swayed it

and cooed to it.  I sang snatches of old songs I could recall

ladies of the Court favouring me with as a child; I hummed and

held it to me like any other baby.