Elizabeth

2nd June 1953

A white silk dress she wore, embroidered with floral emblems; the Tudor rose, the fern, the thistle, wattle and maple leaf, shamrock and leek, protea, lotus flowers, wheat, four leaf clover, cotton and jute.

Heavy under robes, wearing the Imperial State Crown, holding Orb and Cross and Sceptre she left through the nave and apse out the Great West Door, followed of course she was, always, but especially this day.

The Gold State Coach took her with military guard back to her home as flags were waved by swollen crowds that made such noise; a vacuum of wasps. Once at the palace, she presented herself to the people from the balcony of the Centre Room as the flypast and fireworks signalled the end of the final ceremony of the day.

But there was one ceremony left, always and the windows were closed and the drapes were drawn and the eyes of the people were kept out for another year at least.

Charles and Anne were kissed and dispersed, as were the other officials that would hang on until the very end of the night if not otherwise ordered to leave.

Her maids too were told to make themselves absent despite muted protest, as she undressed of heavy garb, leaving herself in the white silk dress alone.

A stairwell, hidden within her chamber took her to another, somewhere in walls adjacent to the Bow Room and secreted her well below the palace into the dank and dark.

No electricity down here in a place before such innovation, cold air swirling round tight corridors from deeper places still and she knew the way, moving swiftly through the twists and turns into webs of dust, for even spiders did not live in this place.

At the end was a door of iron for which she had a key and once it was unlocked, the ceremony could begin.

“You look frail today. I wonder how many years you have left in you.”

The figure was huddled into a corner, in chains, but they were not needed. It smelt of urine and faeces and vomit and blood and the earth.

She and her dress, the lightest things in the room; the contrast, the ying and the yang of it.

“I am Queen and Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith, now what say you?” No answer; a dry throat clearing the way for words that did not follow; the tiniest whimper perhaps or just air escaping lungs and ribs and tired flesh, water dripping somewhere on stone, an infrequent beat, bearable for a short while, but not eternity, whatever that is.

She circled him, for it was a man and he kept his head bowed. Whether this was in defiance, or out of fear, neither knew. The years had damaged them both.

Now she spoke to him in his language.

“Wurden Sie Bevorzugen, Sie hatten in ihren Bunker starb?”

She moved closer to him, the smell nauseating but part of the ceremony, always, the trail of her dress already grey and brown in places from the filth.

“You were a titan. A mad, ranting titan, but a titan still... Now you are my fallen pet. A gift, a gift out of love from a man I adored. The best gift I ever had.”

The man looked up, slowly, for there was no need to rush in this place and any moments with another were something other than being alone in the dank and dark.

He used his tongue to find moisture from the air and worked it around his mouth, gradually. He shaped his words and spoke them, letting them out...

“Mich toten” Kill me. Sunken eyes and cheekbones near exposed from self-imposed hunger, torment and age accelerated by deprivation.

Grey matted hair where once was dark and combed, a beard covering the most famous moustache in the world.