Archive of Our Own

            The sword had swung hours ago.  She’d heard the whoosh of it cutting through the air.  She’d felt the cold steel of it against her skin.  Felt it keep going.  Felt the pain.  So why in heaven was she still here?

            Or why on earth apparently.  She had seemed to be inside a small church or chapel.  She was still wearing the grey dress and red petticoat she’d died wearing, but her head was, mercifully, attached.  The cap that had held her hair had vanished though, and it tumbled down unhindered.

She had thankfully been spared the sight of her own mortal remains, already hastily interred it seemed, but her legs had somehow been inside of the altar.  

She panicked and tried to draw her legs in, shocked and horrified to see that they withdraw from the block of wood as easily as if it had been water.

            How? How was that possible?  The queen tried to shriek but her breaths were quick and harsh, and no more than a strangled cry escaped her lips.  She tried for a few moments to slow her breathing (Why was she even breathing?  She was dead!  This was her grave!  Oh Holy Jesus!) before a small hand on her shoulder stopped it entirely.

  She spun as quickly as she could, breathless and seated on the floor that served as her tombstone (Do not dwell on that now) as she was.  Two boys stood over her, the shorter of them still drawing his hand back.  The taller of the two stood further back, leaning against the wall of the chapel, eyes guarded and suspecting.  She remembered her own boys, lost before they could breathe their first, and her daughter (Motherless and not yet three, does she know?  What will they tell her?) and felt a fresh pang of sorrow.  

            “It will be alright,” the smaller boy murmured.  He knelt at her side, blue eyes never leaving her own. “It’s scary at first, I know.  You are the queen they killed, correct?  We heard about it, but His Grace wouldn’t let us see.”

            The queen tried to gather herself, and not wonder just who “His Grace” was.  “Yes.  I am-“ she stopped herself, “I was the queen.”

            “We were princes once.”  The older boy said.  “Well, Richard was at least.  I was to be the king, after my father died.”  He spoke with just a hint of pride.  The same sort she’d seen in her daughter when her father had shown her off at court.  Would he banish her now?  She knew her baby was a princess no longer, but could her husband so cruel as to punish his child for the supposed “crimes” of her mother?  Yes, her mind supplied of its own accord, you know he would, please Lord let her be safe from him.

            “They kept us here,” The small boy said, jerking the dead queen from her worries.  “To wait for his crown.  But then they said-”  A quick glance at his brother.  “They said horrible things, about us, about our mother.  They said we had to wait longer, and then they would not tell us anything.  But then we... we went to sleep one day and didn’t wake up.  Until we did.  On the stairs.”  The boy’s face screwed up and his eyes began to mist.  

She’d heard of these boys, she realized.  The Princes in the Tower, they were the king’s uncles on his mother’s side.  They’d been dead since before she was born.  Yet they had been here in the castle all these years.

Long dead though they were, they were children still and, through her own tears, the queen cannot help but wrap her arms around the boy, surprised that they do not pass through him as her feet had done with the altar.  The boy stiffens in her arms and the fallen queen fears that he will break away in a moment.  Instead he relaxes and lets her soothe him, while his brother slowly approaches and places a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder.

            The three of them sat there for a while, the boys helping her calm down, and explaining how things worked here in her new existence.  It seemed she was to be a prisoner still, walls and bars were no longer obstacles to her, but some force kept them from straying too far from the Tower’s walls.  Some people left after a while; some were still here after centuries.  The boys didn’t know where the people who left went, but they did sometimes come back for visits.  The living could not see nor hear them it seemed, most of them at least.  Every once in a while, someone could.  That made sense.  She’d always heard tales of the Tower being haunted, but few could say they’d ever seen the spirits.

            Her daughter was lost to her forever now.  She’d never teach her little girl to read, or to dance, she’d never get to see her grown.  The pain of a lifetime of motherhood lost was at the forefront of her mind, but she also mourned the loss of all she could have accomplished as queen.  The work of a few men, combined with the king’s will, had undone all her plans, all her hopes, everything she’d spent the last fifteen years working for.  How quickly would her enemies move to undo all she had done? 

Her family was out of the way she knew.  Her poor younger brother had fallen with her, but she had not seen him since their deaths.  Perhaps the boys were right, and some people could leave.  She tried it herself but found that attempting to walk out of the castle at any point, through any wall, proved useless.

The King did this to you.  A traitorous voice in her mind whispered.  He left you here to rot just as he did the last queen, but you he allowed to be killed first.  The dead queen suppressed a shiver.  That was ridiculous, the king- perhaps he no longer loved her but surely he had esteem enough for her not to wish this?  His ministers, she decided, must have been the true culprits behind this.  They had sought to tear her down, and oh, perhaps they succeeded but she would be damned before they got away with this.

Her hope of the king’s esteem for her vanishes in an instant when she hears that he married one of her ladies the day after she died.  Well then, she thinks, if cruelty is all I can expect from you my love, then so be it.  You may have forgotten, but I can be cruel too.  You and your ministers can face me if you dare, but expect no mercy, no forgiveness from me.  Not even the mercy of the sword over the axe.

~

            In the end, though she has to do very little.  Her replacement is the one who finally succeeds in giving the king a living son, but the woman dies within the week.  The other spirits of the tower see the small smug smile on her face for nearly a month after she first hears the news.  She avoids the boys and “His Grace” a bishop murdered on the king’s orders centuries ago.  She would not be able to explain her smug satisfaction to the boys without feeling guilty and the bishop would lecture her on forgiveness yet again.  And yet again his words would fall on deaf ears if he tried. 

As for the ministers, the king’s favor for one of those men turned out to be as capricious as the favor he’d once shown her. Within a few years of her death, the man who had all but orchestrated her downfall had been imprisoned.  The official charge was treason, but according to the rumors, he’d failed in an attempt to play matchmaker for the king when he had found himself ready to remarry (again).  He had never been exactly popular with the court, even during her own lifetime, so few would be sorry to see him face the block, should the king decide to execute him.  Another piece best of removed from the playing board it seemed, by the king and the very same lords who had sought to remove her.

 She tried to stamp down on any shreds of sympathy she felt for the similarities in his situation and hers.  This man had all but killed her.  Sacrificed four good men to do it.  Had dissolved her marriage.  He had declared her daughter a bastard.

Once she has sufficiently reminded herself that the minister is a monster and not to be pitied, she goes to see him in his cell, gloating a bit to herself.  How does it feel my Lord?  She thinks mockingly.  All your plans laid to waste because a few noble men decided you were in their way.  Do you remember me now?  I promised once to see you dead, if you betrayed me.  I may have gone to the block first, but you will follow me soon enough.  Or are you hoping the king will have more compassion for his servant than his wife? 

He is writing at his desk when she enters, just as he has always done, when she drifts through the walls of his cell.  Time almost reverses and she recalls the many times she visited him in life, to consult on matters of their shared faith, on questions of faith, to threaten him, near the end.  The queen remembers staying longer than strictly necessary simply to enjoy his intelligent conversation, dry wit, and small smiles she used to be able to coax out of him.  She looks at his writing over his shoulder, as she has a thousand times before

I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy he writes.  He is trying, she sees, desperately to save himself, going so far as to praise the king’s divorce from the woman he chose for him, and his upcoming remarriage.  She very nearly forgets the seriousness of the situation and her bitterness and chuckles.

The queen however, for they will never take that title from her, not even from her already cold and dead hands, shakes her head.  It is useless effort she knows, and suspects that he does as well.  She will not allow sympathy, for but she will permit something like pity.  

She remembered asking the king for mercy once.  She’d pleaded for one more chance, begged for the sake of their daughter.  She’d been his wife for three years and loved him longer, but all her begging had won her was a French swordsman to cut off her head.  She’s not sure if the king is capable of granting even that much mercy anymore.  She hasn’t seen her husband since she was imprisoned, of course.  He had never been fond of this castle, preferring his lavish countryside palaces.  

But the stories reach even the ears of the dead, it seems.

~

He dies of course.  

She decides to watch.  She does not flinch at the tremor of his voice as he addresses the crowd one final time.  She does not look away from him, even as his pleas for forgiveness from the king echo her own all those years ago.  However, their situations are far too similar for her to be unmoved.

 Yes, the crowd is more unruly than they were at her own death, yes there is a man with an axe instead of an expert French swordsman, and he is unshaven and wearing only his shirtsleeves and trousers, where as she had been well-groomed and dressed in a silk gown.  But some of the same lords who came to watch her die have come back again.  Come to watch their co-conspirator taste the axe, it seems.  The same triumphant looks on their faces as when it had been her time, not even five years prior.  The straw, the platform, the men, the awful sense of anticipation, it is enough to nearly send her screaming in terror, as if waken from a nightmare had once too often.  Still she makes herself watch as the man kneels.

But then, the axman seems to be drunk, stumbling a little up the platform, his hands clumsy as he reaches for his weapon.  This will not go well.  Her eyes follow every shaky movement of the man as he attempts to grip the ax properly and feels as though she would vomit if she could.

They had been allies once, the doomed man and her, united in a common goal, before differences in opinion made her an obstacle in his eyes. She knows the pain of the death he faces all too well, and at least in her case, the man who’d swung the sword had been a professional, and more importantly, sober.

She tries to be angry, tries to be vindictive, both had come so easily to her in the past.  Spanish princesses, priests, and statesmen had, once upon a time, fallen at her command.  But she cannot summon either now, now when she has more reason than ever before.  The man who ended her is facing the block in her place.  

But, once he was something like a friend, and, sweet Jesus, his son is in the crowd.

There is a moment before he rests, he rests his head on the block, after he finishes his final speech, he scans the crowd one last time.  She knows he can’t see her, knows that no one can. 

 And yet.

There is an instant when his last sweeping gaze rests on her formerly purposefully steady one as it begins to tip into horror.  His expression barely shifts, a slight widening of the eyes, and a parting of the lips.  The change could easily be attributed to a realization that his doom was to occur in mere moments, or he had realized the axman’s state, or any number of reasons.  But his eyes linger on hers for a moment too long for her to rule out what she ought to.  She almost thinks to speak to him, whether to offer words of comfort, or words of condemnation even she does not know, but none come to her now.

The moment passes at any rate and the king’s secretary takes a shuddering breath and closes his eyes.  He begs the executioner to finish the job in a single stroke of the axe.

He doesn’t.  It takes five.  The queen finally turns away after the second blow.

~

The king, she hears, marries his new bride on the same day his secretary dies.  His patience, she supposes, must be wearing thin in his old age.  He had waited until the day after her execution to remarry.  

The new bride is her young cousin, which almost makes her laugh out loud, before she thinks better of it.  She is nineteen, he is fifty.  If she is thinking of the correct cousin, this one was even less likely to do what she had been told than the queen herself had been, but her cousin had never been quite as subtle.  She hopes for the best, but she remembers the king’s temper all too well.

~

The man who died, the man who killed her, she corrects, because even if he didn’t swing the sword it is still true, finds her no less than a week after his botched execution.  She doesn’t gloat, she’s had her fill and they’re both dead and trapped in the Tower, so what’s the use?

She tries to avoid him for as long as possible, his execution stirring up too many memories of her own and she spends days holed up in some room or another shaking and weeping, but he is relentless in the end, searching for familiar faces she guesses.  Hers should certainly come as no comfort, but he catches her eye one day and his go wide.  She considers fleeing before she nods and prays that this satisfies him, turning away quickly. 

He has never been the type to be so easily sated, of course.  

Before long, she feels a hand grasp her arm.  She turns and sees him looking shocked at his success for a moment before composing himself.  No one seems to have explained to him that the dead are solid to each other only.  

“That was you.” He says.  “At my- You were there.  That- that day.”  His voice trembled a little again.  She wonders where he woke, and if anyone has explained anything at all to him.  Looking at the fear in his eyes she almost breaks and does it, but then she remembers her own fear and desperation at the end of her life.  He had not been able to meet her eyes during her sham of a trial.  This memory steels her resolve. 

She looks the man she had sworn to despise in the eye.  “Yes,” she removes her arm from his grasp.  To her surprise he lets her go easily.  “I was.”

He stands there, mouth working, like he is ready to blurt out apologies, excuses, accusations, anything, but it soon becomes clear that they don’t have anything more to say after that.  She walks away first.

            At some point she assumes someone explains things to the man.  She does not ask.  She will not notice who he speaks to.  She will not.

~

It is nearly two years before the two talk again.  

Another queen is in the Tower, waiting for her husband to declare her dead.  She is twenty-one.  The dead queen watches her still living cousin weep for the men whose heads now adorn the Tower’s gates.  Her lovers, according to whispers of the living.  The irony of the situation does not escape her.  Her cousin, another queen of the same husband, will doubtlessly be executed for the committing the same crimes her husband and his secretary decided would justify her murder.

She does not want to talk to the secretary, but few in the Tower have a kind word for her, the dead have heard too many tales of her, and many believe far more than they should. 

 The little princes sometimes find her, they seem to miss their mother, and the dead woman supposes that as a queen (She still refuses to tack former onto her title) she is likely the closest they’ve come in decades.  But she cannot speak honestly with them about this, she knows they are technically far older than her, but they are children still and she cannot talk of blood and guilt with them.  

She still needs to speak with someone about this, and most of the Tower’s occupants seem to despise him at least as much as they do her.  She finds him sitting on a stone bench in his old cell, miraculously unoccupied at the moment.  He doesn’t jump when she sits down by his side, only turns his eyes on her, wary as ever.  For a long time, they are silent.

“Will you watch?” She asks in a toneless voice, staring straight head and studiously avoiding his gaze as he turns to look at her.  This is not what she’d meant to say, but his answer is suddenly very important to her.  “Will you watch another queen fall?” 

He stares at her for a long moment before turning to face the wall again.  “You died a queen,” he says.  “She will die a child.”

“So, you were there after all?  I thought I saw you, but I couldn’t be sure, everything was so…” she trails off.  “Did you enjoy the show?”  she asks straining for levity, though the accusation is still clear as day, the bitterness she could not summon before coming to her easily now, and now that she has her anger to shield her she can look at him without thinking of the fear in his eyes.  “It drew quite a crowd, did I deliver?  I couldn’t exactly ask- “

“Madam!”  The secretary cuts her off and rises from the bench, crossing the cell before turning an accusatory look back on her.  “Might I remind you that you witnessed my execution as well?  Shall I ask if you enjoyed it?”  

She turns icy eyes on him “Might I remind you, Mr. Secretary, that, being dead at the time, I played no part in your fall?”  He looks away from her then.  She rises and plants herself in front of him, making him face her this time.  “Did you think I did not know?  Who else would the king trust with such an endeavor?”

He is uncomfortable now, his eyes do not return to hers, and he mumbles, “I was not the one who suggested- “

“Of course not, people had been suggesting since before we were married.  But who else could have gathered so much evidence, convinced my own father to testify against me?”  She flings the words at him with wild gesticulations, her voice rising in volume, until she is certain all the castle, living and dead, can hear her.  All the fury she could not summon two years prior now came to her with a frightening ease.  “You have not answered my questions Mr. Secretary.  Did you enjoy the show?  Did you feel righteous when the swordsman struck?  Relieved?  Did you watch my head-?”

“Enough! Madam I beg you, enough of this!”  The man cried.  The queen stopped, shocked. She had not expected him to react this way, if she had had any expectations.  In life, whenever she had thrown accusations at him, he had never reacted with anything less than cool civility.  Now he stood, hands shakily scrubbing over his face as if to wash her words away.  Unable to be still.  She had never seen him in all her life, all her existence so agitated.  Any façade of calm had dissolved.

They stand there in silence for a long moment.  She has quieted but she still demands answers, and when he finally looks at her and finds her eyes still accusing, and demanding, he takes a long slow breath and takes his seat on the bench again.

“No,” he says, voice breaking a little.  “No, I did not watch you die.  Perhaps that makes me a coward.  Perhaps it makes me weak.  I thought I would be eager for that bloody sword to fall.  I thought I would feel relief, feel safe in the court at last.  I knew I should.  You’d threatened to put me where you then stood many a time.”  He looks up at her then, daring her to deny it.  She does not.  

“I tried to convince myself that the country needed you gone.  That I needed you gone.  That I could only be safe when you were dead.”  He sighs.  “But your sins did not excuse mine.  I killed you, just as surely as the swordsman did, and I sacrificed four good men to do it.  That moment should have been a triumph.”  He looks at her shame and guilt in his face. “No madam, I attended, but I did not watch, I felt no relief, and have felt very little of it since.”

            She looks for a lie in his face, searches desperately, but there is nothing to find it seems.  It’s only fair, she decides, to offer him a little of the relief he craves.  “If someone had offered me a way to save myself, and those men, at the cost of your head all those years ago, I would have taken the offer in a second.”

            He nods and after a moment he says, “You watched my execution.”  His voice is stronger now.  “Were you satisfied?”

            She still meets his gaze, with only a little difficulty.  “I thought I would be.  I wanted to be.  When I saw that you were in the Tower as I was.  I thought you’d got what you deserved, you brought so many people to the same end.”  He looks away, and her own gaze drops to her folded hands.  “But then, so did I.  Once I was there, I saw the way the executioner moved, and I saw your son in the crowd…  I watched the axe swing twice.  I could look no longer than that.”  They are both silent, remembering.  “Was my daughter- Was she there?  When I-?” she chokes on the words that never seem to get easier to say aloud. 

            The secretary understands her meaning though and cuts her off before she can finish.  “No!  No, madam.  I am…”  he pauses, expression thoughtful with a hint of that dry humor she once enjoyed bringing out in him.  “I will not say I am not cruel, for you of all people know that to be a lie.  But… even I have limits.  Forcing a child that young would to watch her mother-“ He look down again then. 

            The queen sighs in relief and the secretary offers a small smile.  “I’m told she’s a very clever child.”  He offers.  “Her tutors have nothing but praise for her.”

            The queen returns the smile, small and twisted with mingled grief and pride as it is.  “I would expect nothing less.”  She manages an almost teasing tone, before rising, the secretary’s eyes following her retreating form.  “I shall take my leave now Master Secretary, but you did not answer my question.”  She asks softly “Will you attend?”  Please, she thinks, I can’t face another beheading alone.

            The secretary gives her an appraising look and perhaps he correctly interprets the pleading in her eyes, and he gives her a nod.  “I will attend.  Good night Your Majesty.”

            The smile returns with a playful lilt.  “Good night Master Secretary.”

~

            They both watch her cousin face her end, but they leave before the deed is done.  The king could not be bothered with sending a swordsman for this wife it seems.  The axman, who is sober this time, thanks the Lord, looms behind the girl’s small frame as she tries to keep herself upright. 

            “I die a queen,” her cousin declares, trying to sound strong while shaking like a leaf.  But, she says, she would rather have died her lover’s wife.  The older queen’s heart breaks for the girl, she remembers, before the king, before everything became a game, a strategy, when she was that young, and in love with a man she’d told herself she would die for.  How different he had been from the man she had eventually died for.

            “She’s a fool,” the secretary says when they have moved back within the Tower’s walls, away from the sights that are still too fresh for the both of them.

            “She’s a child,” the queen corrects, still reflecting on her own first love.  She sees him give her an amused look.  “You were the first one to say it, not I.  There is no way she could have known what she was getting into.  The danger that she was placing herself in.  I was four years her senior when he first noticed me.”

            “And you knew then?” He inquires, no small amount of curiosity in his voice.

            “Of course not,” she scoffs.  “How could I?”  She’d known he was just as likely to send her away, when she refused to be his mistress, as he was to keep pursuing her.  She certainly hadn’t intended for it to go as far as it had when she’d begun.  It seemed the whole world had been remade since then.

~

            Her cousin finds her eventually.  She’s not sure if the girl was looking for her lost lover, or merely wandering the castle but her cousin happens on her while she is in the rooms that were her final prison while living.  The queen hears a little gasp behind her and turns to see the younger queen hair down, still clad in the simple shift she died in.

            The older woman offers her relative a sad smile and turns to face her.  The last time her young cousin had seen her, she had been only 15, so she greets her as she had then.  “Hello, dear one.”  She says gently and opens her arms.

            The girl chokes on a sob and runs into them.  Both women collapse to the floor as the younger queen sobs into her arms about how she’d never meant it.  Not any of it.  How she had never wanted to be queen, never wanted this, her uncle had made her do it and it wasn’t fair.

            The older woman sits and strokes her hair and hushes her as she used to do her own child.  “I know darling, I know.  Probably better than most.  It’s over now though, dear one.  They can’t make you do anything now.”  When the girl sobs again she’s not sure if it comes from sorrow or relief. 

            As the girl clutches her tighter, the queen looks up from her charge to see the secretary standing in the doorway, looking deep in thought.  When he saw her looking at him, he opened his mouth as if to speak, but the queen shook her head.  Her cousin needed her now, and the girl would not welcome any intruders.  The secretary looked reluctant but nodded and retreated out into the hall, as the queen held her cousin for what could have been hours, or days or weeks, before the girl required and she could turn conversation to her daughter.

~

            They pass the next few years in relative peace.  The secretary and her form a careful sort of - friendship is too strong a word but they are cordial at the least.  Most of the older spirits give them a wide berth, the boys will still run to the queen with exciting news or comfort and her cousin occasionally makes an appearance when she is feeling well.  The queen sees her husband just once between her death and his.

 Just before he marries his final queen, he visits the Tower to see the last one’s grave.  He even surprises her by visiting her own. 

She is walking with the secretary when he arrives and asks him to ensure her cousin stays away.  He hesitates, giving her a long appraising look, before nodding and going in search of her.  The girl is recovering, but her state of mind is still delicate at times and she is still given to wailing at times.  Sometimes she seems to forget she is dead and runs screaming for the king that she is innocent, that she meant no harm.  The sight of her husband here might harm her beyond all hope of repair.  The queen is still angry at time, still bitter, but she is well aware of the bounds of her new reality, seeing her husband will not break her.

In fact, the queen scarcely recognizes him when he enters, it has only been seven years since her death, but her husband seems to have aged twenty in that time.  His once vibrant red-gold hair is now streaked with silver.  He walks with a cane now, and his limp is still all too pronounced.  He had always been a tall man, but he had gained so much weight.  She isn’t certain whether she should feel pity or vindication at the curse age has wrecked upon him, more than any she could have set, witch or no. 

She watches him as he stands over her grave, staring in some silent contemplation.  There is not a trace of emotion readable on his face, and the queen feels the fury rising once more. “Well, my love,” she drawls “It has been some time, since last you visited.  I was beginning to think you had forgotten me.”  No reaction, of course he can’t hear her.  “Well you stopped listening to me while I lived.  I suppose I should not expect you to hear me in death.” A mirthless laugh escapes from her, a small scoff of a thing.  “Of course, if you had listened to me, I suppose you might not have your precious son, or perhaps just another bastard, and you couldn’t have had that could you?” 

The king moves away from the tiles that conceal her mortal remains, and goes to kneel at the altar, walking straight through the queen.  She turns, incensed, stalking after him like a dog after a rabbit.  “Well since you have your son now, I suppose that means it was all worth it.  All that you sacrificed.  Your first wife, the men who opposed me, the men who stood with me, my cousin, my brother, your secretary.  All fallen for the sake of your perfect little prince!  Not even your daughters were spared!  Oh no, they committed the crime of being born without a cock, so they had to be punished!”  She was well on her way to shrieking now, her voice growing louder and shriller than it had in years.  “How can you justify what you did to our daughter?!  Forcing her to grow up without her mother?  Did you even tell her about me?  Or did you ensure that any memory of me was gone?  Just remind everyone that I was a whore, and a witch, and a traitor and not worth mentioning.” 

She weeps now as she unleashes her anger at him.  Tears for her daughter, her cousin, herself, her brother, all who suffered at his hands.  Her tone quiets though and though her voice breaks she goes on. “And what of you husband?  Did you forget me too?  You once tore countries apart because you could not stand to be apart from me.  Do you even remember that?  Or did you forget me the moment my replacement presented you with your son?  Was I worth that husband?  Was my life worth his?  Were all the lives you sacrificed worth his?”

He is still kneeled by the altar, mumbling his prayers, never pausing, never looking up, never reacting at all to her tirade, and suddenly it is more than she can bear.  “Look at me!” she hisses in his ear.  Nothing.  She is as powerless now as she was when he locked her up.  And the rage surges back once more.  She forgets what she is and picks up a candlestick on a table in the aisle and throws it at him screaming, “Look at me God damn you!  LOOK AT ME!”

Her aim is off.  The candlestick does not hit the king but rather the wall behind him, clattering against the wall and the floor as it falls.  He stares at it for a moment and then rises and turns around as quickly as he can on his bad leg, his expression is thunderous, and for a moment the queen remembers what it was like to fear her husband’s wrath, but it turns to confusion and then fear while he looks around seeing no one.  The queen stands before him, unseen, but lets herself believe that he looks at her when his expression turns to fear.

She feels oddly hollow now, having screamed herself hoarse to deaf ears.  All she has left for the man she once loved, then hated so fiercely is a command and a request.  “Get out,” she says, her tone flat, arms at her sides, unwilling to look at him any longer.  “And take care of our daughter, please.”
            She is not sure if he heard her, but then he is gone.  She collapses into a pew and stays there, staring at the tiles and the altar where she first awoke after her death, tears pouring down her face, until a cough behind her draws her attention.  Peering over her shoulder, she sees the secretary.  Apparently, now that the king is, she assumes, gone he has deemed safe to leave her cousin and come check on her.  She offers a tired smile to the secretary, and nods, permitting him entry.  She points to the spot near the altar, “This is where I woke.  After… well, after.”  Her voice still sounds somewhat deadened even to her ears.

“Yes,” the secretary says sitting beside her, caution in his voice.  “I had heard that this was where you were to be buried at the time.”

She does not acknowledge this, merely keeps her seat in the pew, continuing to stare.  “His leg.”  She says abruptly, without looking at him.  “How long-? Do- do you know what happened?” 

He is silent for a long moment before he sighs.  “You remember that last joust I trust?  When the king was injured?”

As if she forget.  She gives him a sharp look before shutting her eyes and nodding.  That day had cost her so much.  Her unborn son, her marriage, her freedom, her position, her life.  She hears him shift beside her before clearing his throat.  “Well,” he says “the injuries he sustained that day… healed… badly.  The wound on leg especially.”

She nods still unwilling to see him.  “How long where you here?”  she asks after several minutes of silence.

He starts, then pauses, “Longer than you might have wished I’m afraid.  I left your cousin playing with the princes not long after I left you.”

She nods again, sighing.  “How much did you hear?”

“Not all of it!” He says quickly.  “I arrived… you were speaking of your daughter to him.  Before you threw the candlestick.”  He forgets his solemnity for a moment turning his attention to the candlestick.  “I didn’t know we could do that.”  He remarks in a bemused tone of voice.

She manages to choke out a tiny gasp of laughter at that, which only succeeds in rendering him solemn again as he turns back to her.  “Are you satisfied now?  Where he is concerned anyway?”

She takes a moment to gather her thoughts before replying, slowly.  “I… have nothing more to say to him.  I know the part he played in my death and I accept it.  I… do not know if I can ever forgive him, if nothing else for his carelessness.  After all I risked for him, he married one of my ladies the day after I died.”  She frowns.  “If that is satisfaction, I do not know if I like it.”

The secretary offers one of his small smiles.  “Perhaps you would be more so, if your aim had been truer.”  He offers, his tone with an edge of teasing to it. 

The queen gapes at him for a moment.  She rarely ever heard him joke in life, and never in death.  And he had never been so bold as to openly mock her before, even in jest.  A shocked laugh escapes from her, and she decides not to point it out.  “Oh, and I suppose you could have done better?”

“Me?  Oh no madam, as I said, I had no idea it was possible.”  He says with a glimmer in his eyes.  He gives her an assessing look and nearly offering his arm before his usual mixture of formality, solemnity, and guilt wash over him again.  “If you are recovered madam, I believe your cousin would welcome your company.”

He is the secretary again, not her friend.  The man who had killed her and not the man she had once talked of grand plans with.  She curses herself for forgetting, for slipping into old habits, and simply offers him a curt nod before following him to where her cousin and the princes wait.

~

Less than four years later word spreads that the king is dead.  She is not shocked.  She isn’t sure whether she should mourn the man she’d loved or curse the man who’d killed her.  She has said her piece to him, whether he heard it or not, and decides that he is God’s to judge now, and not hers.

            It feels like judgement from on high when his son and heir dies within six years. The son he had sacrificed so much, sacrificed her, for is dead only six years after him.  She cannot bring herself to gloat, though.  The boy poor was but sixteen years old. 

And then, disaster.

~

            The Spanish girl, her stepdaughter is on the throne.  This worries her from the first.  The girl had always hated her.  She supposes it is justified given that she was the one everyone given the majority of the blame for the king’s divorce of her mother and her own bastard status.  She prays that the girl will not make the daughter pay for the mother’s sins, but the bastard girl has been on the throne for less than a year before the queen is frozen in her tracks in a walk with the secretary. 

She hears whispers.  The princess has been accused of treason.  The princess is coming to the Tower. 

            No. Please no.  Not her.  She leaves the secretary behind hurtling towards the gates, praying that this does not mean what she thinks.  But it seems her prayers are unheard, and she soon watches as a young woman is led through them.

            She knows she left her stepdaughter with nothing but reasons to hate her, but her daughter would never have hurt her.  Perhaps it was a mother’s bias, but she could not have thought of a single thing her child could have done to deserve this fate.  But her little girl enters through the same gate that she did all those years ago and the queen feels as though her blood, spent though it is, has turned to ice.        

And yet.

It has been fifteen years since the last time she saw her daughter, then a child of three.  She has grown of course, but it takes her by surprise all the same.  She has her father, the king’s hair, red-gold and curling to her waist.  She is tall and slender, dressed in black and white.  Her face pointed; her expression somber.  

But what leaves the queen unable to look away more than anything else is seeing her own dark eyes on the face of her little girl.  Her eyes.  Wearing the same proud, defiant, terrified expression she knows was on her own face so many years ago. 

When her little girl catches sight of the gate she loses her facade of calm.  Her hands tremble and her voice wavers. 

“Please,” she pleads, sounding nearly as young as the last time her mother saw her.  “Any gate but this.”  

So, they have told her something of her mother at least.

The guards have their orders though, and her daughter is dragged through the gates.  The queen’s blood turns from ice to boiling in a matter of seconds and just as she is considering trying to find a way to leave the Tower and show her stepdaughter the meaning of fear, through force of will alone, the secretary arrives at the scene.  

He looks from the princess to the queen his eyes widening in horror.  Just as his mouth opens to speak the queen tears her gaze away from her child and rounds on him.  “Not a word.”  She snarls, “Not one word, not from you.” and storms off to find some unoccupied room to haunt.     

~

The damned secretary never has known when to leave well enough alone.  After a time, he finds her in a dark basement room, throwing metal instruments about the place.  She hears him enter and whirls, throwing something wicked looking and metal at his head.  It does not miss.  It passes through.  Of course.

The man raises a brow.  “Satisfied?”

“Nowhere near,” She glares at him as if willing a mark from her projectile to appear on his forehead, just to give her some hint that it affected him.  Of course, nothing does.  

She sits heavily in a chair, one hand knotting in the roots of her hair.  “I should be with her.  Be able to help her somehow.  Offer her comfort at least.”  The queen’s gaze rises to the secretary’s, eyes narrowed in fury and desperation.  “If you hadn’t-”

“Your Majesty-”

“Oh, do not mock me so!”

“Madam,” he amends, giving her a long look and sitting beside her, heaving a heavy sigh.  “You know as well as I, if I hadn’t brought those charges against you someone else would have.”  

“But they didn’t!  You planned it!”  She waved her hand.  “Yes, I know, I would never have been allowed to remain as queen, but I might have been allowed to live at least!  Another man might have given thought to my daughter!”

“Another man may have had her disposed of as well!”  He snapped.  “I have said before that I regret my role madam.  I had thought we had moved past this.”

“Moved past it?”  The queen laughed bitterly.  “How can I move past anything?  If you have forgotten Mr. Secretary, we are bound by these walls!  Powerless to affect the world around me!  Doomed to watch it pass me by as I stand here unchanging.  My daughter could be killed, and even though I would gladly die again to save her, all I will be able to do is stand and watch, as I did with my poor cousin.”  The queen was shrieking with laughter by now, hard enough that tears streamed down her face.  Her shoulders shook as peals of hysterical laughter transformed into sobs that brought her to her knees, doubled over and facing away from the secretary.

The man hesitantly stepped forward, gently grasping her shoulder.  When she stiffened, he seemed to be prepared to retreat but when she did not shake him off, he kept hold of her and kneeled to face her.  “Your daughter will not be killed.  Deep down I think you know this.  The queen can’t kill her, the people love her.  You have heard the same news as I.  It is natural that you worry for her as any mother would, but you know they cannot harm her.”

“Should,” The queen murmured.  “They should not harm her.  You are correct.  Many of the people admire her, but you may recall my late husband had several people that were widely admired killed.  Regardless of how close they were to him.”  She looked at the secretary again, not bothering this time to hide her fear behind her anger.  “What if the queen takes after her father?  What if she decides that what her people wish is of no concern so long as she holds the throne?”

“Your daughter is her only heir.”  The secretary spoke in a comforting tone and wiped the dead queen’s tears away.  “Yes, she could have a child.  Yes, she could decide to become as tyrannical as your late husband. However,” a small smile flickered over her face.  “You and I both know that women in power are held to very different standards than men.  The king had committed, for certain, the crimes I fabricated against you, and yet only you paid the price.  Do you think the men who helped me kill you would allow that behavior from a woman?”

The queen gave a small, watery laugh.  “I suppose I cannot argue against that.”  She sobered and stared at him intently.  “Do you truly believe they will spare her?”

“I do,” he murmured, holding her gaze.  “And what’s more I believe that she will be queen in time.”  He smirked.  “She’s a clever child of a scheming mother after all.”

The fallen queen sniffles and rolls her eyes.  “Flatterer.”

~

He is right in the end.  The princess is freed, and according to the never-ending gossip mill, that even reaches the dead, she has been sent back to her home estate.  The dead queen breathes easily for the first time in months.  She has been keeping a careful watch over her daughter during her imprisonment, trying to learn all she can about the person her little girl has become.  Watching her child leave is a bittersweet moment, but she is glad of it all the same.

There is a moment where, as the queen stands on the ramparts. her daughter turns around to glance at the tower.  And just as happened with the secretary years ago she swears her child’s eyes grow a fraction too wide and she stares a moment too long.  She hopes she’s right.  She hopes her daughter knows her mother is still watching over her, despite being nearly twenty years dead.  

~

It is less than half a decade later that her stepdaughter dies, childless.  Perhaps she should mourn.  Perhaps she should regret her cruelty to the child who grew to burn sinners and saints alike.  But the queen has never been the forgiving sort and she cannot bring herself to make an exception for the woman who so nearly let her daughter meet her mother’s end.

Instead she rejoices as her daughter is proclaimed queen.  The Secretary watches her joy with a small smile of his own.  

“Satisfied?”  He asks in a mocking tone, an eyebrow raised.  

The queen grins, the effort easier than it has been since king before she died.  “Nearly,” she replies her tone teasing but her expression turning serious.  “You were right about her.  She is clever.”  A half-smile graces her face.   “She will be a good queen, I believe.  Despite her scheming mother.”

The secretary eyes her warily.  “I should apologize, whatever schemes you had-”

“They were no less malicious than yours.”  The queen finished firmly.  “We were desperate to maintain the power we’d fought so hard to gain, and either of us would gladly have thrown the other to the wolves to keep it.  Do not try and make a saint of me Master Secretary, I knew the dangers of the games I played.”

The secretary drops his gaze.  “But perhaps I should not have been the one to raise the stakes so high.  I could have suggested a less extreme solution.  If we’d put all else aside perhaps, we could both have succeeded in our cause.”

The queen held his gaze and gave a slight nod “Perhaps, but Master Secretary the time for what if-ing is long since passed.”  A smile curled around one corner of her mouth.  “I believe I am ready to forgive your sins so long as you can forgive mine.  Of course, if you do not, I shall endeavor to be hateful for all eternity.”

The secretary let out a startled laugh at that.  “I do not think that will be necessary Madam.”  His smile softened.  “I forgive you.”

“And I you.” 

They smiled at each other for a moment before the queen felt an odd lightening sensation.  “Did you-?”

The secretary nodded eyes wide.  “Yes, I- I think we can go now.  Or at least leave the tower.”  His mouth set and he swallowed.  “Time to face, whatever comes next, I suppose.”

The queen put a reassuring hand on his arm.  “Then we’ll face it.  But this time we shall be on the same side, yes?”

He turned to her and set his features, nodding.  “Together, this time.”  He turned towards the gates. “Shall we, Your Majesty?”

The smile curled up again.  “Enough of titles, if you please, Master Secretary.”  She huffed in a teasingly haughty tone.

That small, fond smile.  “Anne then.  Shall we, Anne?”  He offered his arm.

“Lead the way Thomas.”  

And so, arm in arm, the two figures vanished into a ray of sunlight.