8. AN ESCAPE FROM THE SWORD

It appeared suddenly as Elaine mooched along, going nowhere from nowhere and with odd thoughts almost fluttering about in her mind, which wasn’t really there. It was a castle, with a mighty ancient tower, and it dominated all of the world, including herself.

And there were crowds around it, swirling, eager crowds, each and every one of them anxious to see some blood. Lots of blood if they could, but some blood anyway.

And she knew it must be Anne Boleyn, second wife of a fat king, who was led towards the centre of everything, her face proud and her mouth firm as she approached her doom.

“My doom is on me…”

Those might have been the words. Elaine wasn’t listening because all she could see were the precious lips of a condemned queen barely moving as she uttered them.

Then she saw the swordsman raise his sword.

Watched it as it crashed with uncanny accuracy on the sweet white neck of a condemned woman severing flesh and sinews in one powerful cut. Then she saw the head as it fell onto the ground. She saw the lips still moving.

“That was something,” Annie said, appearing next to her.

“It looked … unpleasant,” replied Elaine, “dying like that, I mean, with crowds all baying for your blood. Did you really wish the king dead? Was he the sort of man a woman could hate?”

Annie adjusted her neck. The Past was no place in which to have a wrongly seated head. After all, it might fall off. That was what she thought, but had she been in that place any longer she would have known that was impossible, Heads don’t detach from bodies in the Past because they quite simply barely exist.

The Past is for the essence of people, and their flesh has no merit at all there.

“He was what I’d call a b*****d,” replied Annie. “Not a nice man at all, and talk about being greedy. You don’t get that fat without being greedy! And in bed: I had more joy lying with my own brother and all we did was actually sleep!”

“Is that true? There was a lot of debate about it afterwards. Down the centuries, actually. Were you incestuous with him? They’re still making television documentaries examining the scant evidence left from those far off days.” murmured Elaine.

“Far off days? It was barely a year ago!” whispered Annie, “we always did get on, my brother and me. I suppose he thought he was born to protect me. But no: we did nothing like that! It’s disgusting just to think of it!”

“I couldn’t have known you, though I would dearly have liked to,” Elaine decided, “I reckon we might have got on really well. And maybe you would have liked me. But come, now that you’re here I’ll show you around.”

“Is this Heaven, or is it Hell?” asked Annie.

“Both or neither,” explained Elaine. “Hell and Heaven are what you make them. When my William gets here it will be hell for him because he wasn’t so nice to me, not so nice at all, but to me there can be no place better. Look over there, at Pikey. He was a priest in life and told everyone that they must truly behave well and believe in his god, and if tey did those things they would end up in Heaven. Now he knows he lied, in part. Live a happy and good life and it will seem like Heaven when you get here. But be a swine to others and it will become everlasting hell. That’s really all there is to it. The same place: both Heaven and Hell.”

“And what will it be for me?” asked Annie, a trifle nervously.

“Wait and see. You’ll find out. Let me tell you about your husband, Henry. Look: a future shadow of him is over there with all those people around him, he hates it here but he has to pop in when he’s in bed and dreaming. But he hates it because here he has no power. No wealth. None of the things he cherishes in life. It’s his dream world, and when he’s asleep in his bed and finds his way here in dreams he can’t do anything about it. He isn’t king of the dead, you know, just another shadow of a person in the same place as everyone else and no longer with any power but at the same level as even the lowliest tramp. The dead never had a king, not a queen.”

“But he’s not dead!” exclaimed Annie, “I’d have been told if he was! They might even have postponed my execution and I might have ruled over England like a latter day Boudicca if he’d died before they lopped my head off!”

“She wasn’t a queen of England,” murmured Elaine, “but you must try to understand the way things work here. He’s not dead in the bad old place, but he will be. But occasionally his shadow is here because he’s having a dream, and he pops in along with you and me, only even fainter than us. Time doesn’t exist here, you know. We just are. And, I suppose, always will be.”

“Then I’m going to give him a piece of my mind!”

“Hurry up or he might waken and vanish, just like that.” Elaine snapped her fingers, or would have had she got any, but having none she merely put the sense of snapping fingers into what passed for air.

Annie pushed her way through the crowds still jostling round the vague shape that might or might not have been Henry the eighth.

“Hey you!” she squawked, “my lord, my king, father of my daughter and spoiler of my dreams.”

The misty effigy of a king looked her way and shook his head.

“I’ve ordered that head be shaven off!” he whispered or bellowed or signed as if he was deaf.

“And it was, my liege lord,” replied Annie, “see, I’m here in your worst dreams and, sweet husband, always will be no matter how many brides you take to your creaking bed!”

There might have been a flash of lightning as the king vanished, but wasn’t. Instead he was gone leaving an adoring crowd of future historians wandering lost and lonely in the Past.

“He’ll be back now and again if his dreams are black enough, and permanently ,of course, when he dies, and if I could remember my history I’d tell you when that will be,” Elaine told her.

“Never mind,” said Annie moodily, “he never was worth it. Just a fat Tudor with too many false friends.”

“And a wife too pretty to keep her head,” added Elaine.

© Peter Rogerson 30.08.21

...