24. Anna, Queen of Britain

A NNA , Q UEEN OF B RITAIN Bath, Somerset, 29th May 1613

A BIRD OF PREY WAS circling high above, against the sun. From time to time, it would be lost from view behind the high walls that enclosed this bath, the one they called the King's Bath, with its healing pool of sea-green water bubbling from an ancient spring.

Her doctor had been moving her according to his regimen – one day the great bath, then the small, and then no bath at all, a purge, and now again the King's Bath, which was largest of them all and fully open to the sky.

From where she was sitting, on the stone seat in its arched niche set within the wall, with the water rising warmly past her chest, Queen Anna had a broad view of the bath with all the windows overlooking it, the ornamented stonework and the several ladies who'd been tasked to wait upon her in attendance, wearing, like her, canvas shifts designed to mask the body's shape more artfully than linen.

But Anna had grown tired of watching water and the women, so instead she leaned her head back and looked up. And so she saw the bird.

She didn't know what kind it was – mayhap an eagle. James would know. It was a bird of prey, which meant it had to do with hunting, and if it had aught to do with hunting, James would know.

‘He loves his hawks and hounds more than he ever will love us,' Henry complained once, and although she had corrected him, she'd known that he was right.

She still recalled the evening, not even two months after the death of their little Mary, when James had come into her chamber, distraught.

‘She is gone,' he'd said, as though the loss had just struck him. ‘She's gone, Anna. What shall I do?'

And she'd reached for him, giving him comfort, relieved that he'd finally permitted himself to grieve for their daughter. Anna had been finding it so difficult to stumble through this time alone, with everyone insisting she should show a brave face to the world.

‘I thought you didn't care,' she'd said.

‘Not care! Do you know just how rare a white gyrfalcon is?' James asked. ‘To have one fly away and not return is… well, the loss is more than I can bear.' He'd slumped into a chair, head in his hands, and she had looked at him in silence for a moment.

Then she'd quietly gone out and closed the door.

Above her now, against the sunlit sky, the bird of prey made one more circle, full of purpose. Henry, too, might have been able to identify the bird, not because he loved hunting overmuch, but because he took such an interest in all things, and had such a wide scope of knowledge.

He'd lost much of his taste for hunting in the year that he turned seventeen, when he and James had gone to Royston with a hunting party from the court, as they had done before. Only Rochester had been there, too, and things were always infinitely worse whenever Rochester was there.

She hadn't been there riding with them, hadn't seen what happened, hadn't heard their words; but she'd been told that James had reprimanded Henry, there in front of everyone, and Henry hadn't stood for that – he'd straightened in his saddle and replied in cutting tones that brought his father's temper to the boil. James raised his whip as though to strike, and Henry wheeled his horse and galloped off, leaving the other hunters with a choice: stay with the king or follow Henry. Most had followed Henry.

‘You apologized, I hope,' Anna said to Henry when she had been told about the incident. She'd gone to visit him at Richmond, and they'd walked in the Long Gallery, where Henry kept his paintings and the other works of art and curiosities he was collecting.

‘I made a very nice apology,' said Henry, ‘though it earned me little but an insult. He forgave me but he also told me I was a poor huntsman. Which I might have given answer to, but David trod upon my foot.'

‘Entirely by accident,' Sir David Moray said. He was, as always, walking a few paces just behind them.

‘Yes, of course,' said Henry, with a smile that showed how little he believed it. That was the year he set aside French fashions and began to dress in the more modest, plain Italian style. It made him look more manly. ‘It's just as well you stopped me, though. I should not so demean myself. And anyway, he is not wrong. I never have much cared to hunt, and Father cares for little else.' His tone, though light, held bitterness. ‘He loves his hawks and hounds more than he ever will love us.'

Anna reassured him he was wrong. ‘Your father loves you.'

‘Does he? If the stables were aflame, and Jewel and I were trapped inside' – he named his father's favourite hound, a brutish and ill-tempered beast – ‘and Father could choose to save only one of us, then I'd be lost.' But Henry smiled again, as if to show he didn't care. He slipped his hand in Anna's, as he'd done when he was small. ‘You are the only one he does respect. One day, you'll have to share the secret,' Henry said, ‘of how you manage it.'

It's not respect , she could have told him then. It's done by finding something strong enough to bargain with, and using that as leverage.

Sitting in the King's Bath now, Queen Anna realized, from that memory, how she might still help Sir David Moray.

Word had reached her earlier this week that he had been arrested, and was on the road to London with the Messenger. But perhaps all hope was not yet lost.

For, after all, James had spared Lord Balmerino's life, not because he loved her, but because he feared the truth that she might otherwise reveal.

Sir David knew the truth about what happened to her son. She felt convinced of this. The old blind man had told her so.

And once Sir David shared that truth with her, then she could save his life, as she had saved Lord Balmerino's. She would have to take events into her own hands, and return to London.

The bird of prey passed lower, and its shadow chased across the waters.

Suddenly, a narrow column of pure fire, like the flame of some great candle, swiftly rose straight through the water of the bath, not eight feet from where Anna sat. As it reached the surface of the water, it spread instantly into a burning circle that flared sharply and was just as suddenly blown out, the way a life might be extinguished by a greater hand.

The ladies let out a wild, collective shrieking, but Queen Anna did not move, nor did she make a sound. Her heart raced in her throat and she had one thought only: Henry .

She saw again the blind man's upturned face, and heard his voice: He said to tell you that he kept his promise. That his flames of truth and justice are yet burning, as you wished .

He kept his promise.

And she would not fail him.

She looked up. The bird of prey had ceased its circling and was soaring in a straight line, heading eastward.

Anna stood, and bid her ladies find their courage. ‘It is time for us to leave.'