Everyone knows of Alice, but what of the Queen of Hearts?
This is the tale of Catherine Howard, a girl turned woman far too soon, and queen shortly after. When her forbidden love brings the wrath of King Henry VIII down on her, falling down a rabb...
Catherine looked about her at the spectating crowd. There were more faces than she'd expected, and for a moment, she felt honored that so many would witness her death.
But that honor quickly gave way to fear as she approached the scaffold that still dripped fresh blood. Her knees buckled on the step, and those escorting her lifted her atop the platform, failing to keep the blood from staining their shoes.
They turned her toward the crowd. It was time for her final words, but her tongue was tied in a hundred knots. What did one say before dying such a horrid death? Should she console her audience for attending her own martyrdom? Curse them? Forgive them?
Catherine wanted to curse herself, for she had stood as spectator at multiple beheadings. She now knew what those poor, miserable souls must've felt towards her when they saw her face in the crowd looking on without pity.
She scanned her audience with unfocused and fearful eyes, hoping to find a familiar face. But instead of familiar, she found something quite odd. Mixed into the pale conglomerate of grim expressions and bleak eyes, she spotted it again—a most devilish grin that bobbed slowly out a view.
Searching the sea of faces, she couldn't find it again, the same smile that had appeared near London's bridge. Surely the devils hadn't come for her soul already. Had they? Not that the grin seemed evil in any way. Though it didn't seem heavenly either. Strange.
Strange indeed.
Catherine's eyes darted about her, searching for the voice who'd echoed her thoughts, but she only met the heavy gaze of the headsman who stared at her expectantly.
"Have you not a final word?" Dark eyes peeked from the holes in the headsman's black hood as he towered over her, awaiting her response.
Catherine's gaze returned to the crowd. Her lips moved, and her tongue, finally unbound, spewed words, but her ears were deaf to them. She hoped her lips said things similar to the many other pitiable souls she'd witnessed upon that very scaffold—requests of forgiveness, admissions of guilt, pleas for prayer, and words of hope for safe passage into the next life.
It didn't matter what she said, she realized, and the stream of words came to a halt on her lips. She fought the tears that welled in her eyes, refusing to die like a weeping child.
She drew in a weak breath, barely able to keep herself standing, and recited his words next.
"For treason against the king, I am most guilty. For treason against the heavens, I am most guilty. But for loving another with all my heart, you execute an innocent soul."
Her words were hardly a whisper, and she wondered if they'd even heard them. But that didn't matter either. She knew for whom her blood would spill, and for his sake, she would gladly spill it.
She turned then and faced the block. She knew how to place herself, and she didn't cringe as she watched the blood begin to thicken on its surface.
"Please pardon my work," the headsman said. Catherine's haunted gaze met his, and she felt the guilt reflected in his dark pupils.
Taken aback by Catherine's dark and pitiable expression, the headsman shook his head and continued. "Please, hold no ought against me, my Queen."
Queen. The title sounded foreign to her, as if it didn't belong. Months earlier when the king had first asked her to be his queen, she'd blushed at the prospect. The title of queen had lit her imagination with wild fantasies and had overrun her dreams with limitless pleasures. Now, death was the only garish imagery that came to mind at the title, and it made her sick.
"Today I die a queen," she replied to the headsman, holding his eyes with a dark and burning gaze she didn't know hid within her. "But I would rather have died the wife of a fool."
The headsman acknowledged her declaration with a slight bow, imperceptible to most. He untied her hands and, as practiced, she knelt before the stone.
Boldly and unwaveringly, Catherine peered into the blood that had pooled atop the stone, her blurry reflection staring back at her with stoic reassurance. There was nothing left inside her. Her once lively complexion was pale, and her cheeks were gaunt. No hint of life remained in her eyes, and, in her fading opinion, her soul had abandoned her the moment she'd heard news of his death.
She touched her hand to her bosom where her most precious treasure resided, pressing comfortingly against her heart.
Placing her hands on either side of the blood-stained stone, she inhaled what would likely be her final breath and closed her eyes. Immediately, the horrid image of his lifeless head came to mind, but she quickly replaced it with a memory.
She saw him clearly then, staring at her as he cradled her in his strong arms. He'd whispered something then, a muffled confession into her soft lips, one she would later discover to be his first confession of his love for her.
The memory played over and over again as time seemed to slow and allow her time to find the very moment she sought. The moment she realized what he had said, although she wouldn't admit it until several intimate nights later. He'd smiled lovingly down at her before drawing her beneath him and repeating his exquisite exploration of her body.
She captured that lovely smile as if painting it into her mind's eye, then she slowly bowed and pressed her cheek against the cold, wet stone.
As her final breath left her lungs in a slow and steady exhale, she muttered a prayer. She asked that if God's forgiveness was true, that she'd be allowed to reunite with her heart's desire wherever the afterlife took them.
Then everything fell silent.
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~A Note from the Author~
Thanks for reading Rose with Thorns this far! I've really enjoyed writing it, but the best is yet to come! The last two parts are where things start to get...curioser and curiouser. So please stick around for two more weeks!
P.S. Sorry for the video image of Godzilla at the top...I really wanted this song with lyrics because I felt it really captured the mood of this part as I was writing...but none of the videos with lyrics decided to omit the giant radioactive lizard/kaiju, so just pretend it's symbolic of the monstrous hatred that's being born inside Catherine in her final moments...hehe.
