It took him by surprise, the old insult from her mouth. He laughed. ‘We may indeed be warriors for Christ, lady. Yet your remarkable brother is not of our order because, I think, he finds our methods not militant enough. He would burn the heretic to save them from their sin. We seek to persuade, not coerce.’
She looked him directly in the eyes for the first time. ‘So you would save me from sin?’
‘It would be a great joy to me.’
‘But I am not a heretic.’
‘Yet you are about heresy’s cause.’
‘I am about the cause of my family, sir, that is all. And how can I be a heretic if I was never a Catholic?’
‘You were not baptized?’
‘I was not. My father did not like what had been done in the name of religion. And my mother …’ She hesitated for a moment then went on boldly. ‘My mother is Jewish. She says that makes me one. So now you can hate me for that as well.’
‘Hate you?’ It was stunning news. This woman’s brother was the most virulent Jew hater he had ever met. And he had met many. Yet Gianni, through his mother, was himself a Jew.
He moved away from the table, looked at the bare wooden crucifix that hung upon the wall. With his back turned to her, he said, ‘Do you know what our dear leader, Ignatius Loyola, says about the Jews? “What! To be related to Christ our Lord and to Our Lady the glorious Virgin Mary!”’ He turned back to her. ‘No, I do not hate you for this. I honour you.’
Anne searched the man’s face. She knew she was there to be examined. Wasn’t this the way, to treat her well, entice her, feed her? Yet he seemed genuine. All the more reason to be on her guard. She couldn’t help her tongue though, for she had always found the certainty of religious men aggravating.
‘Yet I love the story of Christ, too. Not what the Church has made it. His story in his words!’
‘Child, it is not for you to interpret his words. That is the Holy Church’s task. Anything else is heresy. Do you not realize, a woman burned here yesterday for that sin?’
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘It seems I am a heretic after all.’
It was not going the way Thomas had hoped. It was time to change his approach.
‘I wish I had the time to loose you from your error. Alas, those hours are not there for us. My master here in England is an impatient man. He seeks information from you. His methods of obtaining it are very different from mine.’
Her voice came in a whisper. ‘Is it noble of you to threaten me, sir?’
‘I do not threaten, child. I tell you what will be, what I am powerless to alter. Unless …’
‘Yes?’
‘Unless you tell me now what we need to know. If you do, not only will your life be spared, but we may then get the time I’d need to save your soul as well.’
She could not tell if his honesty was mere deceit. With her eyes still downcast, she murmured, ‘What do you need to know?’
Thomas sighed. It was a beginning. ‘We must know everything about the hand of Anne Boleyn. Everything about its magical properties, its power to curse, to heal. Everything about the headsman, Jean Rombaud; what your father has told you of the hand, of his dealings with this queen of heresy and witchcraft. Open your heart to me – and, believe it, I will know if you withhold one jot of knowledge – be open and plain, and I will put myself between you and your fate.’
She didn’t know what she could tell him. What did she know after all? She would try to give him something. But not about her father.
‘I have never seen the hand but …’
‘Would you like to see it now?’
He realized he also wanted to see it again, now, here, for he had merely glanced at it once, when they first dug it up at the crossroads in France. It was a relic to him, nothing more, and he had his own unvoiced doubts about the collections of saints’ bones that filled the cathedrals of Europe, traded for piles of gold. He had no doubt though about the power of this symbol over the credulous. That was what men paid for. That power.
He went to the corner of the room to a bare oak chest. Opening it, he pulled a small casket from within and brought it back to the table. The key to it lay on a chain around his neck. He fitted it to the lock and opened the lid.
‘Here, child,’ he said, stepping back so he could watch her face. ‘Here is the source of so much effort and pain.’
With trembling fingers she drew back the velvet cloth. Then she cried out in pain.
It was nothing. The bones of a hand long since picked clean by the processes of decay.
It was everything. It wasn’t a skeleton or a symbol and it wasn’t the extra finger nestled in small beside what should have been the smallest. It was the instant blind-flash-touch of it, as flesh connected to bone and both Annes were suddenly there, joined across the years, across what was not possible and what could not be denied. A queen grasped her, black hair and blacker eyes, not frozen, not a portrait on a wall, but living, breathing … dying, a line ripped across the slender throat, a fracture spread across the bone-wrist she held, a cry cut off from two decades before.
To Thomas, her yelp of pain was the beginning and the end. She fell forward across the table, her hair covering her face. Beneath it he heard a sob.
‘What is it, Anne? Do you feel the evil there? Does the Witch-Queen seek your soul? Christ will protect you, child, have faith only in him. Here, I will hide it away from you. Here!’
He stretched over her to the box, managed to shut the lid, though the angle his body made in trying not to touch hers was awkward. It was when he tried to lift the oaken casket from the table that his knee, wound weakened and now cold from its long exposure to the floor, gave way. He heard the pop, cried out as he collapsed onto her.
She had not heard his words, still reeling as she was with her vision. She felt his weight on her suddenly, pressing her face down onto the table. She slipped from under him, rolled across the floor, came up in the defensive stance her parents had taught her, a leg braced back to kick, hands low, ready to strike. But Thomas lay where he had fallen, half on the table, a hand reaching down one leg, agony creasing his face.
‘Do not fear!’ he gasped. ‘It’s my knee. I … aah! I need to get to the bed.’
He tried to raise himself, to lean on the chair for support, but it slipped, drawing forth another cry. She knew his suffering was real. No matter that he was the enemy. He was in pain. She moved across the room to him.
‘Come,’ she said, ‘let me aid you.’
He grasped the outstretched hand. There was surprising strength behind it and he pulled himself up. Leaning on her, they made the short stagger across to his cot.
‘You see the sort of interrogator I make!’ His face was contorted by agony and the effort to smile.
She had placed a hand against his knee and he felt the first warmth there he had in an age.
‘What have you done to it? Come, tell me. I have some history of healing.’
He was about to protest, to reassert who was in charge. But her strong hands were moving around his injury and where they touched, though he could not believe it, there seemed to come some relief.
‘I was a soldier. It was broken at a siege, and never reset properly. I …’
‘Ssh!’ She laid a finger to his lip then resumed her probing. Twice she made him jump in sudden spasm. Gradually, though, he eased back, letting her fingers work. At last she sat back on the cot end and looked at him.
‘I have seen this sort of injury before. The bone of the knee is out, there is little to hold it in place. I can put it back but it will hurt.’
‘One doctor laid me on the rack while the pulleys tried to realign it. I am not afraid of pain.’
‘Good then. Lie still. And think holy things.’
He heard the smile as she said it and he smiled too as he lay back. It was not a smile that could last; sudden torment shot through him, turning all thought to mist, bringing oblivion.
She laid the leg down and looked up at t
he unconscious man. She would need to wind cloth tight around the knee if it was not to give again. One of the bedsheets was frayed and she swiftly ripped long strips out of it. As she raised the limb to slip the material under, Thomas gave out a groan. She was at his head in a second, a hand stroking gently.
‘Peace!’ she whispered softly, as she had to the boy soldier in the yard of the Comet, as she had to Guiseppe Toldo and a thousand more of the sick and the dying during the siege of Siena. And just like all of them, Thomas Lawley sank back into sleep at her touch, at the soft urgings of her voice.
The knee strapped tight, Anne sat back at the table. He would not sleep for long. And anyway, the door had been locked behind her.
She looked again at the casket that the Jesuit had knocked over in his agony. She set it upright but did not open it. She had seen all that she needed to see of the hand of Anne Boleyn. There was only one small hope for both Annes now. And only one bringer of that hope.
Elizabeth threaded through the thicket of ferns, her soft-soled shoes silent on the tiny, narrow track. The plants were taller than her by a good head, reducing vision to what her weapon could touch. Nonetheless, she moved swiftly, reading the signs as her father had taught her, here a broken stem, there the imprint of hoof in the mulch. The boar had crossed here, crossed back. When she came to some droppings that were still warm, she knew how close she must be.
She was still hot from that last wild gallop across the open field, overtaking the hounds halfway to this fern sea. Their handlers had halted them, their frustrated yelps and snarls pursuing her as she went where they were not allowed. There were human cries too, fearful voices trying to restrain her as the chains had the dogs. But she would not be so bidden, no command could leash her in, and no one would catch up with her here. She knew this land better than any of them, for had her father not created this whole chase?
She thrust the boar spear ahead of her, using it to part the fern that had overgrown the deer track, her left hand holding it in an overgrip halfway up the oak shaft, her right couching it to her side. It was time to move more slowly, for the boar would have paused somewhere just ahead, now that the dogs had halted. This was when the animal was at its most dangerous. Its instinct had caused it to run so far, to out-distance the baying pursuit. Now it would be listening for her just as she listened for it.
A voice called out, about a hundred paces to her left, she reckoned. Philip! His stallion had almost been at her shoulder when she spurred her mare for that final dash, the smaller horse’s nimbleness giving her the edge over the short distance. He’d probably had a glimpse of her when she dismounted to enter the ferns, but she had cut sharp right and right again down the little paths.
Philip. He had teased her, in his courteous way, when she took a boar spear from the rack. ‘A warrior queen – like your Boudicca!’ he had called her, before gently reminding her that it was the men who did the killing, the women who sat back and admired them. He wanted to preen for her, as he had done the week before with that handsome stag.
Well, she was tired of men strutting before her, leaving her the role of simpering adoration. This was not the dry plains of Castile but her green England. She was Harry’s daughter – and her father had taught her how to use a spear.
She paused, her eyes sweeping the track ahead, her own breath suspended as she listened for other breath from heaving, furred flanks.
There! Was that a creature shifting on dried leaves, rising slowly to its hooves, crouching again, preparing to charge, lowering dagger-pointed tusks toward the fern she was just about to part …
She was hit from the side, the little breath she’d held expelled from her, spear dashed to the ground. No chance to cry out, instant terror, anticipating the bone blades slicing into her. Her face down into fern, one hand pinned under her as she fell, though the other reached across, stretching toward the dagger at her belt.
A hand met her hand, another covered her mouth. Relief at the human touch, then outrage. No one touched a princess in this way! Not even a prince. She bit down, tasted blood, heard a muted but satisfying yelp of pain. But the hand did not leave her mouth, no matter that she bit harder. Instead, a mouth was at her ear and a voice whispered urgently, ‘My lady, do not scream, I beg of you. I am a friend and I bring you news.’
Friends did not press her body to the ground. She bit on.
There was more whispered anguish. ‘Highness! I am Jean Rombaud. I was … your mother’s executioner.’
Elizabeth ceased biting, tried to breathe.
‘It is true, Princess, I swear it. I did … some service to your mother. And now you, her daughter, are in grave danger.’
She turned her mouth away from his smothering hand and he let her.
‘Get off me,’ were the words that came, yet she whispered them and he did. She scrambled away from him, to the far side of what she now saw was a small cave of fern. The scent of boar in it was unmistakable. She had found the lair but of a far more dangerous animal. Her hand reached the dagger now, drew it from its sheath. The man squatting opposite showed his empty hands.
‘Jean Rombaud was a giant. Young, powerful. You—’
‘I have heard ballads, Princess, that make me full seven feet tall and almost as wide. And as for youth … well, it was almost twenty years ago.’
There was something in his eyes, beneath the greying hair, a smile there, a sadness too. She had become good at discerning lies from truth. Her life depended on it. The blade lowered slightly, didn’t quite drop. In the world beyond, she heard someone calling her again.
‘Jean Rombaud,’ she said, ‘is a name from a nightmare.’ She felt the tears come. ‘You took my mother’s head.’
Jean nodded. ‘I did, my lady. I killed her who I loved because I had no choice.’
‘Who you … loved?’
‘Aye, my lady. And for that love I swore an oath to do something your mother asked of me.’
The knife fell from her hand. ‘And what did you do?’ she said softly, although she knew the answer.
‘You mother feared the harm that would be done in her name. The harm that could come to you, among others. So she begged me to … to take her hand, that hand, and bury it in a land where once she had been happy.’
Happy? It was not a word that she had ever associated with the mother she could not remember. No one told her happy tales of Anne Boleyn. No one spoke of her at all.
More cries, Philip and others now, concerned, drawing nearer.
Jean looked around anxiously. But he had to wait for her to speak.
Her voice came harsh, the tone set by the emotions surging inside her. ‘And you failed to do this. To keep your oath. For this hand is a great danger to me now.’
‘I succeeded for a time. The hand remained buried until …’ He could not talk about it. There was no point in excuses, in actions by others he still didn’t understand. And the voices were getting nearer. He continued. ‘It does not matter. But the hand is here again. I believe it will be used to threaten you just as your mother feared.’
‘It already has been. Such a threat as I have never faced before.’
She had not admitted that to anyone. But here, with this man, there was no time for games.
‘What do you want of me, Jean Rombaud?’
It was her voice, the way she said his name. Time dissolving, collapsing twenty years, and a queen asking him for a boon. He was asking one of that queen’s daughter now, offering to her great need something he could not deliver. But his own daughter was in peril now and that was all that mattered.
‘I have to get into the Tower, my lady.’
‘You would try to steal the hand again?’
He lied. He had no choice. ‘I have to. For all of us.’
She was versed in reading men’s lies. But her great need, this sudden slight hope, overcame her discernment. Besides, there was no time to consider, as cries of ‘Elizabeth! Princess!’ drew ever closer.
She pulled a heavy bloods
tone signet from her finger. ‘Take this. There is an officer serving at the Tower who loved my mother and, during my late imprisonment there, proved that he loves me as well. His name is Tucknell.’
Voices so close now. ‘Princess! My lady!’
‘Give it to him. He will do whatever the bearer desires. For my mother was not the only woman men swear vows to.’
Jean pocketed the ring. A stem cracked and they heard footsteps. Someone had found the little track they lay just off.
He bowed as well as he could from his crouched position, then made to slip through the foliage. A hand on his sleeve stayed him.
‘Tell me, Jean Rombaud – how did my mother die?’
He looked into those eyes, her mother’s legacy. He might not be able to save her but he could give her this much. His hand closed over hers.
‘She died like a queen. And, at the very last, she spoke your name.’
He squeezed her hand and was gone. He did not stay to see her tears; it was Philip of Spain who beheld them as he stumbled upon her.
‘My lady Elizabeth! Are you hurt?’
‘No, my lord,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘I tripped, is all.’
He helped her rise. ‘Why did you not answer our calls?’
The mask was back in place, just where it had to be. ‘What, my lord? And have you mock your Boudicca, who falls over her own spear?’
She laughed and he joined her.
‘Do you wish to see me kill the beast, Elizabeth? My men have it cornered up ahead.’
He gestured the way Jean had gone. She sighed, leaned into him a little, their faces close.
‘I feel a little faint, my brave prince. Could we not sit awhile and talk?’
His face flushed above the beard, his voice came huskily as he pressed back into her. ‘Anything for my princess,’ he said. ‘Let me take your weight.’
As he led her to the track, she glanced back. When she spoke, it was inside her head.
Godspeed, Jean Rombaud. The tide is turning. At least, I pray it is.
At the water’s edge, Jean sat in a boat, the same one that had brought him down. The wherryman had asked him to drink in the bankside inn while they waited for the tide, but he needed, more than ever, to be alone. The ring lay heavy in his pocket. The tide would turn and he was several hours from the Tower. Once within, he knew what he would do, and what he would not. Reach his daughter, named for a queen, inside the place where he had taken that queen’s life. Free her. He might just have the courage for that, but for no more. He would have nothing else to do with oaths and queens.