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.