Easy As Falling Off a Bike pt 3146
(aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3146 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 Angharad
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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
“You are an enemy of the king, Mistress Boleyn,” said the man in the fancy dress standing before me and waving his finger at me. I was very scared. “You have been found guilty of treason, and there is only one answer to treason.
I felt sick and was in danger of collapse. “You will be taken to a place of execution, one week hence and face the axe.”
“My Lord,” I heard myself say, “if I am to die, then I would ask, as a noblewoman, to meet my maker by the sword, which I believe is the custom.” Somewhere in the back of my mind I’d read that being decapitated by a sword is quicker and thus less painful than an axe.
One of the tortures they used was to place someone under a slab of stone and gradually load it with more weights gradually crushing them and death would eventually be by asphyxiation. Once it became obvious you could talk no more they’d let your family in to jump on the slab and thus hasten the end. Charming people our ancestors.
I was led from the courtroom, where the king sat aloof and ignored me, even though I’d given him a daughter who’d be far greater than him and who would reign for forty five years. So I’d had a few dalliances, or actually Anne Boleyn had, I’d never done anything to any of these people as they were all dead long before I’d been born. If he was expecting me to plead for my life, he’d be disappointed and as I knew the outcome from my history studies, I at least conducted myself with dignity.
Led back to my imprisonment, in the body of that poor woman who was a lot younger than Henry and perhaps naïve when she married, him enjoying the life she had for the thousand days before her death by execution. Was it worth it, to be the queen consort to an absolutist monarch? Or would she have been better off being courted by someone with less status and fewer demands? In hindsight probably, but we know she didn’t and she was accused of bewitching the king—she suffered from polydactylism—an extra finger on her one hand, the sign of a witch. Essentially in those days, almost any minor anatomical difference could be seen as a sign of being a witch and that tended to have a very limiting effect upon one’s life expectancy once spotted by someone looking for it or any other sign.
We should know better these days but in some African countries, people have been accused of witchcraft and killed by a mob, sometimes with what they term a necklace of fire, where a tyre is cut in half and the hollow inside filled with petrol and placed around the victim’s neck before being set alight. I really horrible way to kill someone and I suspect is probably as motivated by much more mundane motives than a genuine belief in witchcraft, such as jealousy or revenge.
We know all too well what having some anatomical discrepancy can feel like, when your mind and body seem out of synch and others then pass judgement on your appearance which in some cases may not conform very much to their stereotypical views on sex or gender. Having been bullied and abused because of this in my younger days, where I was in a position in which I couldn’t win, I had some sympathies for Anne Boleyn. I was abused because I was a feminine looking and to some degree acting boy who obviously upset some of the primitives. Then when I was made to wear female clothing for the Lady Macbeth period, I was abused by different ones for looking too female. Had I looked like a pantomime dame, then they could all have abused me for looking ridiculous. Instead some actually had the gall to ask me out—I ran away from them immediately.
Simon woke me up, I was crying in my sleep—apparently still in Anne Boleyn mode and it took me several minutes to realise what was happening and where I was. I felt relieved when I knew I wasn’t about to die but hoped for those few moments when we seemed to switch places, that she had enjoyed lying beside a decent man who wouldn’t hurt a fly unless it threatened me or the children.
He went back to sleep, he always does but I couldn’t settle and went down to drown my sorrows with a mug of tea. Sitting drinking it in the kitchen I was aware of the temperature dropping, rather it plummeted and I could feel goose-pimples forming in various places. I assumed something was paying me a visitation and hoped it was benign.
I ball of light formed before me and gradually distorted until it became the shape of a person and I immediately recognised it as that of Anne Boleyn. Was I still asleep or what?
“My lady, Catherine, I have come to give my thanks to you for your sympathy with me, might I ask you to pray for my immortal soul, so I might rest in peace?”
“Your majesty, if I may call you that, because you were a queen until your death, I don’t believe in a god so am unable to grant your request, but I offer you love and light, so that you may reach your desire and rest in peace.”
“But Madam, I was told you were an agent of the Lord God and could help me with my journey.”
“Your majesty, I’m afraid you were misinformed, but please take the love and light I offer you as they will no doubt enable you to complete your journey.” I imagined love being carried from me to her in the form of light, a rainbow of the stuff seemed to flow from me and surround her.
“Madam, you are indeed an angel and I thank you for your aid, might I do something for you before I go to my rest?”
“Please tell my daughter Billie that I love her.”
“Madam, she is here beside me, tell her yourself.”
“Hello, Mummy,” said a familiar voice.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, Mummy. Now I have to escort this lady to her resting place. Byeee.”
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” I said to a rapidly fading light.
I awoke some hours later, stiff and my face felt numb where I had been lying on my arm or the table. My tea was untouched. Daddy woke me up when he came to feed the dog and make his coffee.
“Whit’re ye daein’ here?”
“I fell asleep.”
“Sae I see, why no in yer ain bed?”
“I had a bad dream and came down for a cuppa and nodded off.”
That was all I was prepared to tell him. Did I actually talk to Queen Anne Boleyn and my daughter, or did I just dream it? Almost certainly the latter, except when I went to my study a little later looking for a book I wanted, the Book of Common Prayer was open at the page for the committal of a body and I knew I hadn’t used it, not for many years, it was only there because I couldn’t bear to throw it out, my father had given it to me many years ago. I gave a silent prayer for his soul too and that of my mother. Then it was up to shower and the start of another week.
