CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: ANNE BOLEYN UNVEILED

Griselda tackles Annr Boleyn in the woods...

“I thought I'd lost you!” said Griselda. “I thought you'd decided to go to lectures and learn how to teach gobbledegook to the deluded and leave me in peace.”

“Who are you?” asked Lucifer, clearly puzzled..

Of course, thought Griselda he's not familiar with me in any other shape than that of a wannabe nymphomaniac with a penchant for letting the lads see her bottom.

“I'm Griselda,” she replied, “and before you ask yes, this is the real me and yes you can sleep with the pretty young me when all this is over, as long as you don't mind a threesome with this handsome young policeman, and anyway, if I'm not allowed to call you Spotty any more, what can I call you? You said you were Lucifer but I thought that was a joke!”

“Young? Old?” asked Spotty, “I'm lost. What do you mean? How can somebody be young and old at the same time? It's less rational than most religions, and that's saying a lot! Oh, I suppose you can call me anything you like! Spotty will do, at a pinch, I suppose, but my name really is Lucifer. I can't help the spots, you know. It's acne and it's awful, but I have to live with it. It's why I can't get any girls,and it makes me so miserable.”

“Lucifer? Really?” grinned Griselda. “Most appropriate, I'm sure, and I'll sort your spots out later if I remember. But before we get lost in a load of nonsense about names and their relevance let's take stock. As I see it, for no apparent reason the idiot Professor Stroggleoff has decided we're his mortal enemies and is going to make life impossible for us. Now, dear constable and lover of mine when I'm young and gorgeous, tell me why you brought this eleven-fingered anachronism with you,” she indicated Anne Boleyn with a nod in her direction and continued, “For all her pretended innocence I'm pretty sure she's a spy with more than a little magic of her own at her finger tips.” She frowned at Anne Boleyn who was standing slightly apart from the rest of them, wearing what could only be construed as a puzzled expression along with her barely adequate leotard that had a few bits of bramble and nettle still stuck to it.

“She wanted to come,” replied Lockemup, “and you know how I'm jelly in the presence of a pretty face and lose all control of myself.”

“I know that's exactly what you're not!” replied Griselda tartly. She turned to Anne Boleyn. “right, madam, you might look like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth in that leotard, showing all your flesh off like no Tudor queen ever would, but what are you really up to?”

It was a somewhat grotesque scene, the ancient and undoubtedly witch-like Griselda Entwhistle, back slightly bent, nose and chin both hooked as if they'd been separated at birth and were trying to reunite at this eleventh hour and eyes as piercing as shards of splintered glass. And facing her, dressed in a skimpy black leotard and with little blotches of blood on her pale skin where the thorns had pierced it earlier stood the regal yet vulnerable figure of Anne Boleyn with her peculiar number of fingers. Her small mouth was pursed as if she was in deep thought, searching for a reply that the old witch would accept without asking too many questions..

“Professor Stroggleoff suggested it in the first place and anyway I like dressing like this,” muttered Anne. “I was never allowed to when I was with my lord the King in his castles. In those days, so far off yet so fondly remembered, I had to cover myself from toe to shoulder, so to speak, and cover my head as well! I had to be so very proper! Isn't it natural that a girl should want to look her best after that kind of restricted life? I thought I was happy back then, with ladies in waiting to do whatever I ordered them to and always the chance of a bit of seduction when the King was away �" he did it all of the time, so why shouldn't I? He had so many mistresses I lost count, and I hardly had anyone...”

“Bah! Humbug!” snapped Griselda. “When I first saw you there was more than one of you! I saw a group of girls all dressed the same way, all young, all beautiful, all like clones of the one creature!”

“You say too much, old woman!” snapped Anne Boleyn, losing, for a moment, control of her previous inscrutable reserve. Then she relaxed and seemed to pull herself together, almost back from an invisible brink. “We are the gym team,” she said, slowly. “I really love the floor exercises and the other girls do things with different kinds of bars and ropes. We never had such things when I was young, and I wish we had. Back then if you tried to do anything like leap over a wooden bar you got nothing but splinters, and that can be painful!”

“Oh, poor you,” sneered Griselda. “Now let's see you for who you really are! Tickling t*****s, reveal our lady queen!”

“Pardon?” asked Constable Lockemup, “tickling whatties?”

“It's the spell,” said Griselda, darkly. “I didn't choose the words: they chose me. It's what got me out here where I'm relatively safe for the moment. And look it seems to be working again! Who would have thought that tickling t*****s could do so much!”

Before their eyes Anne Boleyn started changing. Her skin, hitherto smooth and young, began to become deeply wrinkled, her cheeks, with the bloom of youth on them, became sallow and like rocky caverns, her lips, from being luscious and deliciously red like ripe strawberries became like thin lines on a face made of over-stretched skin. Her demeanour changed, too. The young woman became old and the black leotard, stretched tightly over the young woman, hung loosely off her older self until it barely hid anything at all. And still she shrunk. Still she grew ever older before their disbelieving eyes. Thin wisps of white hair were like strands of candyfloss in the still air.

“St-st-stop!” bellowed Spotty aka Lucifer. “Th-th-that's quite enough!”

“Tickling t*****s, halt!” snapped Griselda, agreeing with the tree-hugger for once.

“Crikey!” hissed Constable Lockemup. “That's disgusting!”

“It's only what she did to me,” replied Griselda primly. “She made me into my normal self and that's the same as what I've done to her. The only trouble is, she's over six hundred years old, and she's showing it.”

“Help...” moaned the living skeleton that was Anne Boleyn. “What have you done to me? Look at my gnarled old hand! Oh, woe is me, woe, woe and thrice woe...”

“That'll teach you not to try and pull one over on me!” snapped Griselda. “But as you look so absolutely disgusting in that leotard I'll do something about it. Tickling t*****s, make her appear to be herself at ninety! This geriatric looks truly appalling, even to my eyes, so make her a bit younger.”

The subsequent transformation was an improvement of sorts, and the ex-queen did look as if she might stay alive for the remainder of the day at least. But she still had the appearance of a ravaged scarecrow from one of the local farmer's fields.

“Right,” said Griselda when it became clear the Tudor queen stood a reasonable chance of surviving for the rest of the day at least, “let's see why I came here. Why did the words Targon Woods come into my mind? And what's so special about this patch of trees?”

“This is T-t-targon Woods,” said Lucifer. “It's an ancient place, and very sacred to those of us who care about things. We tree-huggers come here sometimes. It's got history!”

“I'm going to look around, then,” muttered Griselda. “Tickling t*****s, show me what I'm here to see!”

“I like the idea of tickling t*****s,” whispered Constable Lockemup to Lucifer, and the spotty student smirked back at him..

But Griselda was poking around, looking here and there in dark shadowy corners of the patch of woodland. In a few moments she stopped and poked with a wooden stave she found on the ground, thrusting it at something hidden under brambles and in the depths of shadows long untouched by the light of any sun or moon..

“Here!” she shouted, sounding anything but the old woman that her appearance made her. “There's a gravestone!”

“In the woods? I've n-n-never seen that before,” murmured Lucifer, “and I've been here tree hugging lots of times.”.

“Let's see what unfortunate got buried here,” suggested Griselda. “It's so overgrown. Come on, you lads, help me clear this stuff away. Many hands make light work, they say, and we need light work!”

“It's a bit prickly,” muttered Lockemup, sucking his hand where it had been slashed by a thorn. “I'm not keen on this! It hurts.”

“Cry baby! All right, tickling t*****s, clear the vegetation away from the gravestone so I can read who lies here,” commanded Griselda.

“You could have done that before I got stabbed,” muttered the policeman.

“Oh, stop moaning,” growled Griselda.

As if by magic (or rather, in truth by actual magic) the gravestone became clear and almost pristine. Lettering was clear and visible as if it had been carved just yesterday, and it seemed that the grave contained the last mortal remains of two people. And, if the inscription was to be believed, they were both called Anne Boleyn, though their dates were very different..

“1698 and 1809,” read Constable Lockemup, then he looked at the skeletal Anne Boleyn, more dead than alive as she stood staring at the stone with a look of horror on her ancient face.

“I'm not dead!” she wailed, her voice cracked and painful to listen to.

“Not quite,” muttered Constable Lockemup, darkly.

“Of course you're not!” snapped Griselda. “But I think this sad little stone gives us the beginnings of an answer.”

“I can't see it if it d-d-does,” said Lucifer. “And anyway, an answer to what?”

“Come on!” decided Griselda. “We can't stay here all day! I need a fresh mind to tackle this one. You, skeleton woman, when we get back to Scrumblenose you go back to your master and tell him that he's up against Griselda Entwhistle, and if he still wants to be Pope he'd better keep on the right side of her or else! The rest of you, come on! I'm a student in this University and by hook or by crook I'm going to my cosy little room for a good night's sleep. Spot �" er, Lucifer, you can let Constable Lockemup share with you, I suppose?”

“At a pinch,” he replied, grudgingly. “Though I d-d-don't want anyone to think I'm gay, sleeping with a bloke! Too many divinity students are unsure of their sexuality, but I'm not. What are you going to do with the broomstick I brought for you?”

“Hm. I'd forgotten that. But we'll ride it back to my room. It'll be easier going in through a window than using the back door. I suppose you know how to get on one?”

“I want to walk!” decided Lucifer.

“And me,” said Constable Lockemup. “I don't trust broomsticks. Never did and never will.”

“We'll make sure the Boleyn woman gets back s-s-safely,” said Lucifer. “She can hardly ride on a broomstick, not in a leotard with that bony old bottom!”

“If that's what you want, do it, but be careful,” warned Griselda. “I'm not sure what this is all about yet but I bet it's dangerous. I never did trust old men who had their hands on too much magic, and now there's the mysterious grave with its unhappy occupants!”

She took the broomstick from Lucifer and sat astride it.

“Tally ho!” she called, and shot off into the air with the ease of a deity zooming between the stars.

“Some woman!” exclaimed the constable. “You never get used to it,” he added, thoughtfully. Come on, you lot: back to the University if that's what Griselda says.”

And they traipsed off, two young men and an old, old woman, more bones than flesh, really, but still with one hell of a trick in her little old heart.