2. THE SECOND KISS

THE TALE OF SEVEN KISSES (2)

PROLOGUE

The cell was cold and dark, and Anne sat by its tiny window and stared out at the dawn’s early light.

The liars had won, but then she guessed they would. Her husband, the king, needed a new spouse, one more likely to give him tghei heir that he most desired, and she hadn’t managed it. But she hadn’t crossed her legs, either, and shut the door to his rampaging desire even though sometimes the stench of his breath threatened to turn her stomach. She would never have done that. And there was pretty and bright Lizzie to show that she knew how to birth a child, that her flesh was able to turn Henry’s seed into life.

But instead of rejoicing in the big hall at the birth of a son and heir, and maybe dancing after feasting, maybe even taking her husband into her bed and giving him free reign to spill his seed as deep into her as his stomach would allow, she was in this cell awaiting the executioner.

They had invented tales of how she had treasonably seduced the poet and let him into her flesh. They had even, darkly, whispered of how her own brother was one of those she had lain with. Her own brother! Against the laws of man and God! As if she ever could!

And because of those lies that Henry was so happy to believe she was to go into the cold of day very, very soon and feel a blade sever her head until she knew no more. And she would go down in the annals of history as the Boleyn girl who shagged any creature with a pulse when she should have patted the curly head of a son she couldn’t beget and spent the rest of her long life in glory.

She heard the tramp of feet approaching her cell. She looked one last time out of the tiny window and for no good reason she blew the world a kiss.

THE TALE

It was my birthday yesterday. There was a time when I thought that I Gwennie Goldfast, would never get much past sixty, and here I am, seventy-three and still breathing!

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. I have a croissant usually, maybe with a little honey or marmalade according to my mood, and tea or coffee, again according to my mood. Today it’s tea.

Outside the weather is dreadful. You wouldn’t think it was the height of June, a month when the sun is supposed to be out and bright just about all the time. But it isn’t like that today, not yet anyway: maybe this afternoon... The clouds that cover it are thick and grey and the last thing I want to do is go shopping, but I must.

I do my shopping once a week and today is this week’s once. But I think I’ll wait for the clouds to blow away, and take the threat of rain with them. There are already spots on my window, huge spots that I can actually hear landing on the glass.

And the door knocks.

I hate it when the door knocks because I never expect any visitors. I’m happy to be on my own and every so often have to discourage the man from the flat above me when he stops by to see how I am. At least, that’s what he says he stops by for, but I’m a bit afraid of the male sex and fear he might want to steal my precious seventy-three year old virginity from me. There. I’ve put my darkest fears into words! I’m terrified of what they call sex.

And there again: the door is knocked a second time and I know that I’ll really have to tell him not to call on me. I’m quite all right and if I weren’t I’d phone for a doctor or an ambulance.

I have to open the door. I don’t intend to shout through the letter box! Everyone would hear me and know my business, and that would never do. So I go to open the door and am surprised to find it isn’t the man from the flat upstairs at all.

It’s a pair of guards.

At least, that’s what I think they are. Dressed in an old fashioned uniform, looking very much like the old codgers they call Beefeaters, the men that guard the Tower of London and still parade around in the kind of uniform their forefathers wore hundreds of years ago. Very pretentious if you ask me!

“Hello,” I say, irritated at being accosted by strangers who look both antiquated and intimidating. I mean, what would men like that want with me, a retired librarian with not much to do with what remains of her life but read it away. I know that sounds pathetic, but I enjoy it anyway.

One of them grabs me by the shoulder, roughly, and I try to shake him off, and he says something to me using words I struggle and fail to understand. No, not struggle, but certainly fail to understand. And his companion scowls at me and grabs me by the other shoulder so that I’m held in a vice-like grip that immobilises me, and I find myself being virtually dragged down the stairs to the ground floor level, and out onto the street.

But it isn’t the street. It’s nothing like the street, and there’s a sombre grey stone building looming at me, darker than the clouds had been moments ago.

I shouldn’t have recognised it, but I do. I’ve seen it before, through a dingy window in a dank cell. It’s a platform, a stage, and I’m being taken to it by the two archaic guards and their vice-like grips. One of them is talking to me, but I don’t understand a word he is saying. It might be a sort of English, but then, if it was, wouldn’t I be able to understand him?

I look around for sanity, but there’s no sanity anywhere near. Just crowds of people cheering. And I realise that the thing about cheering is it isn’t in a language, but universal. Men and women cheering today must sound exactly the same as our distant cave-man ancestors did when they cheered in a group.

There are steps leading up to the platform, and I am forced to climb up them, one foot in front of another, until I reach the top. In front of me is a hooded man, and I can see, though the eye-holes, that he is as grim faced as the guards, and more: there’s a cruel glint which says he enjoys his work.

Then they release me, thank heavens, and I want to run, but I can’t. I’m transfixed to the spot because I’ve seen this place before, though a grimy window in a tower. And I’ve seen the man of God before with his mitre and book, black-cloaked and sombre. I’ve heard the words he had to mumble, not daring to look at me but concentrating on his book as if he’d never read them before, and I know that he has. He’s rehearsed this speech, he knows every syllable, every nuance of every word. He just can’t look me in the eyes. Maybe his god won’t let him...

Then, resigned to my fate, I kneel before him and rest my chin on a block of wood. This, I knew, was my destiny, the entire truth that lies behind my existence, and in my head is just one almighty thought.

The things said about me. The lies told. The hurtful sins I’m said to have committed. And me, a virgin too, for seventy-three years.

The hooded man raises his polished sword high above his head…

… And the scene changes.

The stone walls vanish, the grass is green, the road has cars trundling along it, and I’m dressed in my favourite tartan skirt, the Royal Stewart pattern, wearing my pretty pastel blouse with its design of tiny flowers down the front. And a mighty spot of rain splashes on my grey hair.

Opposite me is a pub. I know it well though I usually walk past its doors on my way to the shops because it’s down the street on which my flat was built.

It’s called THE QUEEN’S HEAD and suddenly I want a drink even though it’s not yet noon. For no better reason than because I think I once did, I blew a kiss towards its open door, and walked carefully across the road, careful not to be killed in careless haste.

© Peter Rogerson, 11.03.20